


God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

by FrameofMind



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-31
Updated: 2009-08-31
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6295711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrameofMind/pseuds/FrameofMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. God, how he hated Christmas carols. Now, if someone would only think to write one about the overcrowded shopping malls and the sticky pine needles and the damn Salvation Army, that would be the Christmas carol for him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Feh

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of a story posted to ff.net starting in 2004. It was finished in 2007 and spruced up in 2009, and I'm posting it to AO3 in 2016 for archiving purposes... :)

“According to the most recent statistics, Amatext lost a net total of approximately three billion dollars over the last year to internal securities fraud. Three of their board members have officially been indicted, and two others are under investigation. As it now stands, they’re just barely limping along—they have no choice but to sell for any price we’re willing to pay. That is, unless someone else beats us to the punch,” Miroku added, shuffling deftly through the documents on the conference table before him. “If you’d all turn to page twenty-four, you’ll see a summary of Amatext’s financial statements over the past five quarters. The graph on page twenty-six illustrates their recent market value trends and stock pattern. I’ve also included a copy of their most recent prospectus.”

There was a shuffling of pages as all the members of the board complied with the man’s request. All but one, that is—but no one questioned his rebellion; their CEO had never been one for poring over the minute details. He was more of a “bottom line,” “big picture” person, at least when it came to running the company—partly because he absolutely hated board meetings. He worked much better when he was alone in his office, in his own little space where there was no one to bother him or drone on at him about prospectuses and financial statements. His leadership had taken a bit of getting used to on the part of the board, who had been used to the meticulously controlling style of his brother—but in the months since Sesshoumaru’s death, the board members had become accustomed to Inuyasha’s relative lack of organization.

Not that Inuyasha didn’t have control of the company—far from it. He just had a very different method of exercising his power. “Alright, alright, let’s cut the crap. Miroku, how much is this going to cost us, and how long do we have to wait before we can buy them out and hack them to pieces?”

Miroku’s small sigh didn’t escape the hanyou’s notice, but he let it pass. “There are several offers on the table already. Time Warner has made a bid, as have Disney and Viacom, so it would be advisable to act sooner rather than later. I can have my financial committee run some rough numbers before the meeting on Friday, if you’d like.”

“Fine. Okay, were done now—everybody back to work,” the hanyou said, getting to his feet and stretching. “Meeting adjourned.”

The atmosphere of the room lost its businesslike quality, relaxing into the easy conversation of colleagues as the board members gathered their materials and filed out of the room, heading back toward their expensively furnished corner offices to arrange more meetings and consultations and presentations. Inuyasha rested his elbows on the back of the tall, black-leather swivel chair at the head of the long table and gazed out the windowed wall to his left at the panorama of Midtown Manhattan, listening as the chatter died away down the hall. A frown creased his brow all of a sudden as something registered in his brain, and he called out to the brown-haired man who was just approaching the door, briefcase in hand.

“Wait, Friday?” Inuyasha questioned. “I thought the budget meeting was supposed to have been scheduled for tomorrow?”

Miroku’s eyebrows raised at that, and he replied with a bemused sort of half-grin, “Tomorrow is Christmas, Inuyasha—no one’s coming in tomorrow.”

“Feh,” Inuyasha scoffed. “Why not? The meeting isn’t until two-thirty—they’d have the whole morning off. What could you possibly have to do in the afternoon?”

The other man chuckled at that, a small note of pity in his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, spend time with families and loved ones, perhaps? Celebrate the season? Play with their Christmas presents? Some people are funny that way—they actually _like_ to spend quality time with their husbands and wives and children.”

“Feh.”

“Speaking of which,” he continued, ignoring the hanyou’s less than agreeable response, “are you absolutely _sure_ you two don’t want to come over for dinner tomorrow evening? Sango’s roasting a turkey—though I wouldn’t recommend getting your hopes up on that one. Cooking has never exactly been her strong suit. Nor mine, come to think of it. Thank god for Stouffer's and Pizza Hut.”

“No thanks, we’ll be fine,” Inuyasha replied with a shrug.

“You sure? Taro would love to see his god-parents,” Miroku coaxed, already knowing he wouldn’t get anywhere. It was no use trying to get Inuyasha to do anything these days, least of all anything that might come under the heading of “fun.”

“Nah—I’ll probably end up having to come in to the office to get a few things done tomorrow afternoon anyway. There are still a couple of clauses pending from Sesshoumaru’s will that haven’t been taken care of, and I might as well take care of them when no one’s here.”

The Chairman nodded resignedly and turned to go. “Alright, if that’s what you want. But honestly, you should try to…” He turned back to find Inuyasha scowling out the window again, and deflated. “Nevermind.” No sense in beating his head against a brick wall, and Inuyasha’s skull could rival the Great Wall of China these days.

But Inuyasha was curious. “What?”

“Nothing,” Miroku sighed, exasperated.

“No, I should try to what?” he pressed, defensiveness creeping into his tone.

Apparently he wasn’t going to be satisfied with that—not that he ever was. “I was just going to say that you ought to at least make an effort to relax and enjoy yourself every once in awhile. Go out, have fun, maybe even take your wife somewhere.”

“I do! Just last week, I was in Sacramento for a meeting with the head of—”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean really relax, have a conversation or two with the people around you that doesn’t revolve around business, see if you can actually make contact with other human beings on a non-professional level.”

“Feh—I talk to you all the time.”

“Right—but when was the last time you and I just went out for a drink?”

“Hey, if _you’re_ lonesome, don’t pin it on _me_!”

Miroku rolled his eyes, but chose to ignore the jibe. “When was the last time you really spoke to your wife?”

“This morning!”

“Without fighting?”

“This—” he started, but broke off—no, that had been sort of a fight. “Well there was—” But no, that one had lead to that stupid fight about the cottage cheese… “Oh what the fuck do you know anyway…” he ended with a grumble. “So what if we fight a little? Doesn’t everybody? You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”

Miroku raised his hands in front of him with a shrug. “Whatever you say, Inuyasha. I’m just giving you my opinion.”

“Yeah, well, you’re an idiot.”

“Whatever you say, Inuyasha. Merry Christmas,” he said, strolling out of the room into the hallway, out of sight.

“Feh,” Inuyasha mumbled.

*      *      *

Several hours later, Inuyasha was hunched in a miserly fashion over a stack of documents that had recently been faxed in from their Denver office regarding a requisition for a redirection of personnel—or some other damn thing. Truth be told, his gaze was sliding right through it as though it weren’t even there. The more he tried to focus on the neat, occasionally smudged little black letters, the more they seemed to run together, resembling a great grey verbiage soup, of which he could make no sense whatsoever. Finally, he gave up, pushing back in his chair and pressing the heels of his hands against his tired eyes in an effort to relieve the tension headache beginning to form just behind them.

Outside, the sky was a dull shade of grey, clouds hanging low overhead and dropping tiny flaked tears silently to earth. What was it about this time of year that seemed to make the whole world so damn happy, and him so damn miserable? It was as if everyone else was blinded by the whiteness of the snow, and he was the only one who could see the clouds from whence it came—not to mention the messy, disgusting brown mush that it became when it reached the city streets. Snow was cold and wet and made it hard to drive or hail a cab. It caused accidents and frostbite and avalanches and gave people pneumonia. Christmas meant he had to try to figure out something new to buy for every single person he knew, had to fight through crowds of people doing their holiday shopping and walk down icy, slippery sidewalks freezing his ass off just to buy gifts that would most likely be returned or exchanged in three weeks anyway. It meant dragging a tree up to his penthouse apartment and dropping sticky pine needles all over his expensive carpet; it meant going to all the trouble of pulling out boxes and boxes of decorations and putting them up all over the place, only to take them down again once the season was done; it meant running into those damn bell-ringing Santas on every street corner (couldn’t they at least vary the rhythm a little?) and being hit up for spare change; it meant people going on vacation and leaving him short-staffed, then coming back and wanting to show him a million pictures of their kids all smiling in front of famous landmarks and Christmas trees surrounded by people he didn’t know; and most of all, it meant Christmas carols. God, how he _hated_ Christmas carols. Every year, starting the day after Thanksgiving, he found himself bombarded with the same tired repertoire of melodies, all chanting cheerily about snowmen and Santa Claus and Jesus. Now, if someone would only have the presence of mind to write one about the overcrowded shopping malls and the sticky pine needles and the damn Salvation Army, _that_ would be the Christmas carol for him—but everyone else was busy being blinded by the snow.

Inuyasha heaved a sigh and collected the documents spread across his desk, shoving them into his briefcase and clasping it shut. He shut down his computer and moved about the office gathering his coat and gloves and any other work he thought he might have a chance to get to that evening, and then grabbed his briefcase and headed out into the outer office, locking his door behind him.

His secretary had already left for the day, as had many of the other employees, so the halls were relatively empty as he made his way swiftly to the elevators. As he passed by the door to what had once been his brother’s office, he paused only briefly, peering thoughtfully at the finely engraved brass nameplate that had yet to be changed, even though its owner had been dead for nearly three months. He’d have to remember to have the janitors get a move on that one. No sense in letting such a roomy office go to waste.

The elevator let him out on the street level and his shoes clicked softly on the marble floor, echoing in the empty lobby as he crossed and exited through the great revolving doors onto the street. His chauffer had taken the night off—Christmas Eve, of course, as Miroku and others had so helpfully reminded him throughout the day. He reached for his cell phone to call the car service—but then thought better of it, slipping his phone back into his pocket with a grumble. It would probably take forty-five minutes for the guy to show up, with the snow and the holiday and everything, and he wasn’t inclined to hang around waiting. He’d have to walk over to Sixth Avenue and hail a cab.

Hunching his shoulders and turning up the collar of his dark overcoat, he squinted his eyes against the bite of the wind as he set off down the street. Everywhere around him, there were people rushing home for the holidays—families smiling and laughing, toting shopping bags filled to overflowing with brightly colored boxes as they made their way to the homes of friends and relatives, smartly dressed executives picking up last minute gifts for their significant others, couples young and old headed out for romantic dinners at upscale restaurants, or just out for a stroll and ice skating in Rockefeller Center. Inuyasha merely scowled slightly and shrugged deeper into his overcoat, fixing his gaze straight ahead and wondering once more why he was the only one who seemed sane enough to be feeling the cold.

The sound of a spare few coins rattling inside a pitifully rusty tin can met his ears, and he narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the scruffy, scraggly-haired old man who sat slumped against the wall of the building, wrapped in a worn down jacket that looked older than dirt (and quite possibly made from it), giving him the most pathetic, helpless ‘Tiny Tim’ look he’d ever seen.

 _Feh. Probably some drunken pervert who lost all his money in Vegas after a binge—either that or some bored middle class guy trying to cheat me out of a couple of bucks, just for the hell of it. Either way, it’s not happening._ He marched straight past the man, not even giving him a second look.

He flagged down a cab amidst the stream of traffic headed uptown, sliding precariously on a patch of ice as he ducked into the relative sanctuary of the back seat. “Fifty-seventh and Park,” he muttered, fiddling with the heating vents so that they were pointing at him more directly. The cab smelled faintly of overcooked vegetables and some kind of spice he wasn’t familiar with. He cast an irritable look at the driver, then another at the radio, which was producing some garbled combination of sounds that vaguely resembled music, but the cabbie didn’t seem to take the hint.

When they arrived at his apartment building, he wasted no time in passing the driver a few bills—just enough for a one-dollar tip—and climbing out, hoping the stench of cabbage wouldn’t cling to his clothes for too long. He didn’t bother to acknowledge the doorman who opened the wide glass door for him, too busy sniffing his sleeves crossly and hunting his pockets for his keys. When the elevator opened at the top floor, he finally found himself outside the door to his apartment, much to his relief.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside, shrugging off his overcoat and suit coat. Laying both over the back of the leather couch, he tugged off his tie as he headed for the bar to fix himself a nice scotch on the rocks. That was when everything changed.

There, lying on the black marble countertop, in plain sight, was a piece of paper covered in neat, curly black writing that could only belong to one person.

_Dear Inuyasha,_

_After our fight this morning, I took some time to try to think things out so that we could talk more about them when you got home. Of course my first thought was about how to remind you of exactly what we’d fought about, since I knew you wouldn’t remember by the time you got home. Then it occurred to me that I really had no idea when you would be home, though I knew it wouldn’t be any time before eight o’clock._

Inuyasha glanced at the time on the nearby microwave—it was half past eleven.

_That was when I realized that something was really wrong here, something that won’t be fixed by my reminding you of our fight and your feeding me one of your ready-made apologies and promising that it will never happen again—until the next day, when it does. I don’t know if it’s you or me or the pair of us together that’s the problem, but I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now, and I know that whatever it is, I can’t just sit by and let this be, day after day. Not anymore. Maybe we’ve always been a mistake, and it’s only now that I’m realizing it._

_I’ve gone to my parents’ house for the holidays, and I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be coming back—I’m not sure if I’ll be coming back at all. Maybe that would be the best thing for both of us._  
  
Merry Christmas,  
  


_Kagome_

For a long time, Inuyasha did nothing but stare at the page, letting the words and letters mesh themselves into soup as he’d done with the documents at his office earlier that evening. His jaw muscles tightened convulsively as he tried desperately to keep a handle on his emotions. But no matter what, two little words just couldn’t seem to blend in: Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas indeed. There was another lovely thing to add to the list of reasons to hate Christmas.

All at once, the damn broke loose. He crumpled the paper in his fist, tearing at it ferociously until it was no more than a mangled collection of paper scraps, and then rounded on the nearest object he could find—a menacingly cheerful little ceramic Santa Claus—and hurled it against the wall with a glorious crash and a growled curse. It was followed by a reindeer and two wise men, a piece of which ricocheted off the wall and smashed into the tree, sending a symphony of little glass balls cascading to the floor in delicate pieces as well. He tore the cushions off the couches and threw them around the room—“Goddamn—” _heave_ “—wench!”—kicked tables, scattered books from the shelves, knocked over lamps, until at last he threw his head back and screamed venomously, “Merry _fucking_ Christmas to you too, bitch!”

Eventually his temper subsided somewhat, his breath coming in heavy gasps, his gaze twinged with darkness and malice and loathing—though of whom, he couldn’t be entirely sure. He stormed over to the bar, foregoing a glass and snatching up an entire bottle of Macallan thirty-year-old scotch whiskey. Taking it back with him to the disheveled couch, he dropped to a seat, kicked off his shoes and flipped on his top of the line flat-panel screen TV with a vengeance, resolving to get drunk off his ass in the shortest amount of time possible.

 _“…had a very shiny nose…and if you ever saw it…you would even say it glows!”_ the television sang cheerily at him, and he scowled darkly at the clay-mation figures moving about the screen. He took a giant swig of scotch in defiance of the television’s overt Christmas spirit and changed the channel.

“…the perfect gift for that special someone! It’s still not too late! All stores open till one on Christmas Eve, for the last minute shopper!” He changed the channel again, grumbling a few choice profanities and something about shoving it up that special someone’s ass.

A few more swigs of alcohol and what seemed like a hundred channels later, it was becoming clear that Inuyasha wouldn’t even be able to escape Christmas on television. By that time, however, he hated the idea of standing up even more than he hated the idea of Christmas, so he finally settled on a channel that was playing something that struck him as the most acceptable thing on at the moment.

“…if they’d rather die, then they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population,” came an irritable, crotchety old voice. Finally, a kindred spirit.

“Uncle, you don’t mean that!” a younger man protested.

“Yes he does,” Inuyasha put in bitterly, not particularly caring that the man in the television couldn’t hear him. He downed another deep gulp of amber liquid, relishing the warmth and calmness it seemed to be bringing to his body. At last, he could feel it really taking effect.

The images on the television set became blurrier and blurrier with the passage of time and the steady consumption of liquor. Soon, he was just barely aware of the noise in the room, his eyelids drooping heavily and his head nodding and jerking as his body drifted toward unconsciousness.

_“God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…For Jesus Christ our sa-avior was born this Christmas day…to save us all from Satan’s pow’r when we were gone astray…o-oh tidings of co-omfort and joy, comfort and joy…o-oh ti-idings of co-omfort and joy…”_

The next thing he knew, Inuyasha awoke to the chime of a bell.


	2. Shades and Shadows

The ringing echoed painfully inside his head, as though his skull were one giant jingle bell being beaten unmercifully against a brick wall. He winced, groaning at the thunderous pain. “Kagome, would you get the goddamn phone already?!” he mumbled irritably.

“What are you babbling about now, little brother?” came a cool, stoic voice, dripping with disdain. That was definitely not Kagome.

The ringing subsided gradually, and as it did, Inuyasha’s brow lowered into a frown, deeper and deeper. That sounded like…but, that was impossible…

Carefully, he cracked an eye open. The television had been turned off at some point, though he didn’t remember having set the sleep timer—strange. The only light in the room was the soft yellowish glow that spilled out from the kitchen behind him, casting a brief respite of brightness upon the carpet before trailing off into shadow.

Then the shadows shifted, the source of the voice stepping into view at last, and Inuyasha’s eyes grew ever wider with shock, and a hint of fear, as he took in the tall, imposing, and unmistakable figure of his older brother. “Sesshoumaru...” he breathed.

And then…

“What the _fuck_ is going on here!”

Sesshoumaru was dressed in black from head to toe, his clothing nondescript but for the long ebony overcoat that fell almost to his ankles, his hands resting casually inside its pockets. A sharp contrast to his midnight ensemble, strands of hair the color of the moon fell smartly down his back, straight and sleek as ever. Altogether, it was his brother as Inuyasha had never seen him before in his life; Sesshoumaru had always seemed the type who’d been born in a double-breasted suit. Inuyasha couldn’t decide which prospect was stranger: seeing his brother return from beyond the grave, or discovering that the post-mortal Sesshoumaru favored a wardrobe that made him look like he’d just stepped out of _City of Angels_.

“Eloquent as ever I see, Inuyasha,” the older man said by way of reply.

The hanyou shook his head, trying to keep up with the conversation. “You’re dead!”

Sesshoumaru arched an eyebrow. “What an insightful observation.”

“Who the fuck are you to criticize?!” the hanyou shot back. _What the hell am I doing—I’m arguing with a hallucination…_

“Must have been the scotch...” he groaned to himself, squeezing his eyes shut and kneading his forehead with the heels of his hands. The pain in his head had relaxed into a mere agonizing throb, and his tongue felt thick and fuzzy inside his mouth. He was definitely feeling the beginnings of one mother of a hangover—how long had he been asleep?

“Unfortunately not, little brother. Believe me, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here, but I don’t really have much choice in the matter.”

The hanyou opened his eyes once more and regarded the apparition skeptically. “Fine then—if you’re _really_ Sesshoumaru, how did you die?”

The older man gave a small, long-suffering sigh, but humored his younger brother’s inquiry nonetheless. “My limousine was blindsided by some drunk who ran a red light. I suffered from two broken legs, a crushed collar bone, internal injuries, and a severe loss of blood. I was rushed to intensive care at Mercy Hospital on East 68th street, where they managed to keep me alive until I experienced a sudden heart failure. It was really quite painful, actually—thank you for reminding me.”

Inuyasha peered at him skeptically. “When?”

“Wednesday October sixth, 2004, at 3:59 p.m. and seven seconds,” he responded in a bored tone.

“Feh—I knew all that! Well, not the 3:59 part, but still—if you’re a hallucination, then you would know everything I know!”

“Oh for the love of god, Inuyasha, would you please just open up your pea of a brain and accept the fact that I am here so we can get on with this?”

Inuyasha narrowed his eyes, thinking. _Well, I’m still not sure I buy it—but if he’s only in my head, what harm could it do to listen to him for a little while? Better than watching TV, anyway…_

“Fine,” he conceded at last. “So you’re what then, a ghost? A spirit? A goblin?” Inuyasha asked, still unconvinced.

“Call me whatever you like, but the fact of the matter is that I have a job to do before I can move on, so let’s just get this done and over with as quickly as possible.”

“Move on?”

Sesshoumaru gave a small sigh of frustration from the back of his throat. “It’s a rather complicated process, one that is most likely incomprehensible to one who is of the living—particularly one of your level of intelligence.”

Inuyasha glared at him and decided to egg him on, just to spite him. _His level_ of intelligence—fuck that. “Try me.”

“No. Suffice it to say that there are certain…requirements that I must fulfill in order to take my place at the next level of existence, and this one involves you,” the shade explained in a tone of voice that made it clear that the subject was to end here.

Of course, Inuyasha had never been particularly well-versed in the subtleties of conversation—one of the reasons he had never gotten along with his elder brother. “Why?”

Sesshoumaru’s sharp golden eyes glared down at the hanyou sternly. “That is irrelevant. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s get on with this!”

“Fine—just say what you wanna say and get the fuck out of my house,” the hanyou snapped, folding his arms and kicking his feet up onto the coffee table.

“Nothing could please me more,” Sesshoumaru agreed. “Inuyasha, the simple truth is this: You’re not good enough.”

Inuyasha’s glare snapped to his brother’s face as he shot to his feet—immediately regretting it when his head gave a sharp throb and his vision danced drunkenly; but he ignored that fact. “What the hell is that supposed to mean!” he demanded, “And who are you to tell me that! You’re the most ruthless, heartless bastard who ever walked the goddamn earth—with one possible exception,” he amended darkly, more to himself than to Sesshoumaru. “Dammit, I should’ve known that even once you were dead you’d find a way to come back and piss me off!”

“Will you please cease ranting and allow me to explain myself?” the late Takahashi brother interrupted crisply, and Inuyasha fell silent. “As I was saying, you, little brother, are not good enough. I know this because…” his chin lifted a fraction of an inch, “…neither was I. And now I’m paying the price for it—having to come back here and try to drive this all-important point into that thick, arrogant, selfish little skull of yours. You are a vacuum, a black hole in the fabric of human society. You take money from your customers, you take the business of your competitors, and you take the love and support of those around you—but never do you give back.”

“The hell I don’t! Do you have any idea how many people would be unemployed right now if it weren’t for me—if it weren’t for _us_? I pay them nice cushy salaries at that! And what about Kagome? I gave her every goddamn thing she could have wanted—a nice apartment, money to spend whenever and wherever she wanted, a career, presents on her birthday and Christmas and anniversaries—and who was it that picked up and left, just like that? Not me— _her_. You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about you dead bastard.”

“Don’t I? As much as it pains me to admit it, you are too much like I once was. Decidedly lacking in breeding and sophistication, but nonetheless, your path runs far too close to that which I ran, and the paths of others that have gone before us. If you continue as you are now, I can promise you that you will come to regret it, when your time comes.”

“Feh,” Inuyasha snorted angrily, snatching up the nearly empty scotch bottle lying on its side by the couch and taking a sharp swig. “You’re full of shit, Sesshoumaru.”

Sesshoumaru quirked an eyebrow at his brother, whose face had become so flushed with anger that it would hardly have been a surprise if his head had burst into flames then and there. “I wish I could say that I was surprised at you, little brother, but your reaction is true to form as ever. I can see that, as I predicted, it is going take more than my wise words to convince you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Inuyasha questioned, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Where his brother was concerned, ruthless as he indeed was, anything was possible.

“Before the night is over, you will be visited by three apparitions. Each has a purpose, and each will strive to teach you something about yourself. Listen to them, Inuyasha—hear them, and take their words to heart, because if you do not…”

He paused, and for a moment Inuyasha didn’t think he was going to continue. But then:

“…you’ll end up like me.” Those last five words were spoken with such regret and remorse as Inuyasha had never heard uttered from this particular mouth, and the striking sincerity of them hit him like the clapper of a carillon.

Inuyasha could do nothing but stare in silence as his brother turned to step away into the shadows once more. “The first will appear when the clock strikes one…” His brother’s voice, low and rolling, like smoke from the stacks of a factory, spread around him and seemed to hang in the air, even as Inuyasha witnessed the slight rustle of the curtains covering the door to the balcony—and all at once, Sesshoumaru was gone.

The hanyou ran a hand distractedly through his sleep-rumpled silver locks, glancing absently about the room. With each passing second, the strangeness and certainty of his brother’s presence seemed to fade from the room, almost as though he had never been there at all. Perhaps he never had been—perhaps the entire conversation had been no more than the idle wanderings of an alcohol soaked mind. But then again…

Feh. Wasn’t there some sort of principle that stated that the simplest explanation was usually the truth? Well, which was simpler: A dead Sesshoumaru travelling all the way from wherever the hell he’d ended up in the netherworld back to Manhattan for the sole purpose of helping his younger brother avoid eternal damnation, something he would hardly have considered while he’d been alive—or Inuyasha getting drunk off his ass and imagining the whole thing?

There was no question: Sesshoumaru was dead, and Inuyasha was drunk—end of story.

That settled, Inuyasha gave his head a small shake to rid himself of the experience—ending, of course, in a small wince of pain when his head throbbed once more—and went to the kitchen to hunt up a couple of Advil in hopes of mitigating the inevitable hangover. He shook two of the little pinkish-brown miracle tablets into his hand—then, at another wince, decided to make it four—and reached for a glass to fill from the tap.

Just as he was downing the last of the pills, in the midst of a final swig of water to wash the bitter flavor from his mouth, a voice entered his ear, its whispered words slithering against the side of his neck and sending a chill rippling down his spine, which caused him to spit a mouthful of water across the counter.

_“When the clock strikes one…”_

He whirled around, eyes wide and darting anxiously as he stared into the darkness. But this time, the voice seemed to have no owner.

“Feh,” he whispered irritably, wiping water from his chin with the back of his hand as his heart rate returned to normal. “That does it, I’m giving up scotch. Tomorrow I switch to cognac.”

And with that parting thought, he put to rest all further thoughts of ghosts and brothers, and most of all Kagome, and climbed into bed, not even bothering to change into his pajamas, since his charcoal grey slacks were already wrinkled from sleeping on the couch. All he did was un-tuck his white button-down shirt the rest of the way and crawl under the covers, forcing himself to ignore the empty space on the other side of the bed, where his wife should have lain.

But even as he drifted off to sleep, his mind couldn’t help but linger on the absence of her steady, soothing breaths—in and out…in and out…

*      *      *

 _Tap-tap-tap_ …

Inuyasha groaned sleepily, pressing his face further into his pillow.

_Tap-tap-tap…_

He groaned again and gave his shoulder a shrug in an attempt to discourage the…whatever it was that was tapping him from doing so again. But apparently annoying little early morning tapping things were very persistent.

_Tap-tap-tap…_

“Wakey-wakey!”

Inuyasha’s eyes snapped open at the sound to find a pair of very large turquoise eyes _much_ too close to his own, causing him to give a startled yell and jolt backward—which, of course, resulted in the smart crack of his skull smacking against the solid oak headboard.

“Dammit— _fucking_ son of a goddamn bitch—don’t _do_ that! Who the fuck are you, anyway?” he demanded irately, massaging his poor, immensely abused head and pushing himself into a sitting position. Then he blinked in confusion at the creature in front of him, and added, “ _What_ the fuck are you?”

Upon closer inspection—or rather, after backing away a few feet—he could see that the owner of the eyes was quite short, possibly even a child, with a reddish mop of hair on its little round head and a fluffy tail protruding from its backside.

“I’m Shippo,” the creature replied brightly, waving a hand at the bedside lamp and causing it to blink on, then hopping up onto the bed next to Inuyasha. “I’m a kitsune—or rather, I _was_ a kitsune, though that was awhile ago. I had a bit of a career change a few hundred years ago, so now I do this for a living—so to speak.”

“And what would ‘this’ be, exactly. Pissing off hung-over hanyous?”

Shippo flashed him a grin calculated to annoy. “Saving lost souls, of course. And by the looks of you, you’ll be a tough case to crack,” he explained, dusting off his little midnight blue hakama and pushing up his turquoise sleeves as though preparing to excavate an archeological site.

“What’s that supposed to mean, runt?” Inuyasha retorted.

“Should’ve known I’d have to spell it out for you—though I thought this part was your brother’s job.”

“My brother?” the hanyou interrupted, all of a sudden remembering his surreal encounter with Sesshoumaru earlier that night, and feeling a lead weight slide into the pit of his stomach, dread spreading through him.

“Yeah, your brother—you know, tall guy, long silver hair, wouldn’t smile if his life depended on it—though that’s sort of moot at this point, with him being dead and all. You know, you actually remind me of him—”

Inuyasha cut the kitsune off by snatching him forward by the front of his shirt. “Shut up, you little pipsqueak!”

“Hey, relax, it was just a passing observation. No need to get your panties in a twist.”

“ _Panties?_ ” he growled.

“Fine, fine, your macho, manly, boxer-shorts, okay?” Shippo placated. “That’s what you wear in this era, right? Now will you put me down?”

Grudgingly, and with a great deal of glaring, Inuyasha complied.

“That’s better,” said Shippo, straightening his clothes once more. “Now come on, we’ve got to get going if we’re going to get through all the material I’ve set aside from your file before—”

“My file?” the hanyou interrupted.

“The complete and unabridged records of your life. ‘Course, we don’t want to have to relive the entire thing—that would be boring as shit. You’re kind of a loser, you know?”

“Hey!”

Inuyasha swiped at him, but Shippo dodged easily, continuing, “—so I’ve earmarked a few incidents relevant to my current mission.”

“Wait, wait—so _where_ are we going, exactly?”

“Put simply, we’re going to the past,” the kit replied. “More specifically, _your_ past.”

“The…past? Bullshit—how the hell are you planning to pull that off?” Inuyasha scoffed, crossing his arms and slanting the little furball a skeptical glance.

“You’ve been visited by your dead brother and a kitsune who lived hundreds of years ago all in one night, and you still don’t believe that anything is possible? See, that’s exactly your problem, Inuyasha—you’re way too negative and close-minded.”

“Fuck you.”

“Case in point. Now let’s get going!”

Inuyasha heaved a sigh. As much as he hated to admit it, the creature had a point: what could be stranger than Sesshoumaru coming back from the dead to give him a few words of advice? Time travel was just the next logical step in this very complex psychedelic jaunt he seemed to be having this evening. Maybe that scotch had been laced with something…

And anyway, if he was dreaming, why not make the most of it?

“Fine then—lead the way, runt.”


	3. The Early Years

A high-pitched wailing sound bombarded his ears, long before he even became aware of the world around him. All that was was emptiness and sound—the gut-wrenching, ear-splitting, nerve-grating sound of an infant’s tears.

He tried to block it out, crushing his ears to his skull, his face fixed into a grimace, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t escape the sound, no matter what he tried. It was almost as though the crying were coming from within him, echoing against the inside of his skull.

“What the hell is that damn racket?!” he demanded in frustration, calling out to no one.

Much to his surprise, No One answered. “It’s you—can’t you tell?”

Inuyasha frowned—or at least, he meant to frown. He wasn’t entirely certain that he had substance at the moment, so it was difficult to tell whether he was actually frowning or not. “Shippo, is that you?”

“Who else would it be?” the kitsune chirped back cheerfully. He was having way too much fun with this. “Honestly, I can’t believe you don’t recognize your own crying—it’s so loud and insistent. Sounds exactly like you…”

“Shut up and tell me where the hell we are,” Inuyasha interrupted.

“I can’t do both at the same time, Inuyasha,” Shippo replied matter-of-factly.

The hanyou heaved an irritated sigh (assuming that he did, in fact, have lungs). “You know what I mean—and for the love of god, make the crying stop!”

Then at last, the nothingness gave way to somethingness, and the terrible sound receded—though it did not disappear. Inuyasha glanced about, taking stock of his surroundings with skeptical curiosity. He knew this place—very well, in fact—though he had not set foot here in years, and had always assumed that he never would again.

The room was cavernous in its size, long and rectangular, with three of its walls filled floor to ceiling with books. The fourth, which he was currently facing, was made up of several large, arched windows with little cushioned seats at the base of each one – cozy little alcoves for reading or talking or simply gazing out at the grounds. The windows were lined with heavy curtains of crimson velvet—pulled back to let the sun in—which matched the elegant Persian rug that covered the floor. There was a wide wooden desk with a couple of chairs facing it at one end of the room, and a sitting area around the fireplace at the other. In the space between these two stood several people, all crowded dotingly around a little white bassinet, from whence the crying came.

“See anything you recognize?”

“Feh—‘course I recognize this place,” Inuyasha replied offhandedly, crossing his arms over his chest. “It was my dad’s old study. This was the house where I grew up.” Then, eyeing the little group of people in slight puzzlement, he lowered his voice and added, “Can they hear us?”

“Nope,” the kitsune replied with a shake of his head. “We’re only observers—none of them will be able to see or hear us.”

“Ah—just curious. Hey…” he mumbled, frowning at the scene before him, “this isn’t Christmas…”

“Sharp as ever, I see…” Shippo chided wryly.

Inuyasha shot him a glare. “I _mean_ , I’ve seen _A Christmas Carol_ —aren’t you spirit-people only supposed to show me things that happened at Christmas?”

“Ideally, yes, but in case you haven’t noticed, _A Christmas Carol_ is a book—”

“It was a _book_?” Inuyasha blinked.

“—whereas this is real life. Seems you didn’t plan ahead well enough to have all the pivotal events in your life land on Christmas—you were just a jerk all year round…”

Inuyasha shot him a glare.

“So, I’ve decided to improvise a little. Sure would make for a neat little through-line though, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, most of your Christmases are surprisingly boring.”

“Hey!”

Shippo raised his eyebrows at his charge.

“…yeah, okay,” Inuyasha conceded petulantly. “So, uh, what exactly am I supposed to be seeing here?”

Shippo gave a small, exasperated sigh. “If I told you that, it would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? All I can do is show you stuff and let you draw the conclusions. Now tell me about those people over there.”

The hanyou eyed his furry companion impatiently, not too keen on being manipulated—but he acquiesced nonetheless. Obviously he wasn’t going to be left alone until he did as he was told, so he might as well go along with it for now. “That’s my dad over there, in the blue suit.”

The pair of them watched as the man in question leaned over the bassinet, his back straight and stiff at a board, hands clasped smartly behind his back. A proud yet distant sort of smile graced the man’s face at the sight of his newborn child.

“And that’s…that’s my mom, standing next to him.”

Her face was kind and heart-shaped, soft ebony locks falling over her shoulders and curling elegantly at the ends, making beautiful patterns against her white and blue floral-printed dress. Her smile gleamed as she gazed lovingly down at the infant, soothing him gently into silence.

“Betcha can’t guess who’s in the carriage…” Shippo cut in tauntingly, and Inuyasha gave him a dry look, to which the kit merely shrugged innocently.

“It’s me,” Inuyasha replied unnecessarily, turning his gaze back to the group. Two other people bent over the child as well, neither of whom he recognized—he supposed they must have been friends of his parents, or perhaps some of his father’s business associates.

Shippo hopped up onto Inuyasha’s shoulder from his former perch on a nearby end-table and wrapped his arm around the back of the hanyou’s head, placing one hand on either side. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re—” Inuyasha protested irritably, trying to shake the runt off as he forcibly redirected his gaze to one of the window seats way over in the corner.

“And who’s that?” the kitsune interrupted. At last, Inuyasha noticed an additional occupant in the room—one who did not look the least bit pleased in any way. There, sitting silently upon one of the plush velvet cushions with his knees pulled up to his chest, sour golden eyes fixed resentfully on the backs of the adults crowded around his new baby brother, sat a ten-year-old Sesshoumaru.

Inuyasha blinked.

“Wow…” Shippo commented offhandedly. “Even at ten he was grumpy. I hope not all of your memories are gonna be as dull and depressing as his must be.”

“Yeah, no shit…” the hanyou murmured in reply—though he didn’t take his eyes off of Sesshoumaru. Something in his brother’s expression unnerved him somehow. It wasn’t as though he felt endangered by him or anything like that—in fact, quite the opposite. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the look on Sesshoumaru’s face, as familiar as it was, made him feel something…strange.

A sharp tugging on his ear brought Inuyasha out of his reverie, and he snatched the annoying kit off his shoulder, bringing him up in front of his face to glare at him. “What the hell was that for?” he demanded.

“Hey, don’t yell at me—you were the one who zoned out. Come on, we haven’t got all night. We gotta get a move on.”

“Already? Then what was the point of bringing me all the way back here?!”

“You’ve seen what you needed to see already—we gotta go to the next clip.”

Inuyasha quirked a dubious eyebrow at the kit and heaved a sigh. “If you say so…what now?”

“You’ll see…”

The world around them melted and blurred like a watercolor painting in the rain, and then began to clear, bringing into focus an entirely different location. This room was much smaller and darker than the other had been, though the red velvet curtains lining the windows told them that this was the same house—not that Inuyasha needed to be told. As soon as his eyes took in the sight before him, he had no doubt about exactly where and when he was.

Rain pattered gently against the windowpanes, and the light that filtered in from outside was gray and dingy; the only light within the room came from a small lamp on the table beside the canopy bed in the center. The same dark-haired woman who had bent over the bassinet in her blue and white floral-print dress lay nestled beneath the comforter—only now her skin looked wan and slack, her lips pale, her eyes sunken, and even her once-cheerful curls somehow limp and diminished. At her bedside sat a young boy, no older than eight or nine, with golden eyes and long, thick, silver hair that didn’t quite hide the tips of the two little triangular ears on top of his head. But those ears drooped slightly, flattened in dismay, and the eyes were trained upon the woman with a fear that no child’s eyes should hold.

The older Inuyasha observed his younger self dispassionately, contriving to look bored by the whole situation. “Oh for fuck’s sake, what the hell good is this supposed to do?” he grumbled under his breath, averting his gaze as though looking for something more interesting to watch.

Shippo shot the hanyou an exasperated look. “Quit whining and pay attention!”

“This is ridiculous,” Inuyasha scoffed. “How is standing here staring at some sick lady supposed to ‘make me a better person’?”

“That is your _mother_ ,” Shippo pointed out, appalled. “That is _you_ sitting beside her. She is dying _slowly_ and _agonizingly_ of _cancer_. Don’t you _feel_ anything?”

“It was a long time ago!” Inuyasha defended. “Shit, I hardly even remember the woman anymore. ‘Sides, it happened, and there was nothing the fuck I could do about it—so why go crying over it? The best way to avoid showing your weaknesses is not to have them.”

The kitsune raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Instead, he continued to watch the child sitting in silent vigil at his mother’s bedside, and soon Inuyasha found himself watching grudgingly as well. The mother lifted an emaciated hand and gently brushed back a lock of hair from her son’s face with her fingertips, then stroked the side of his head and ran a finger along the edge of one of his prone ears.

“It’s alright,” she whispered. “Everything will be alright, sweetheart. Please don’t be afraid for me.”

The young hanyou nodded his assurances, though his expression did not change, and his mother drew him forward into her chest, holding him and rocking him ever so slightly back and forth.

Inuyasha looked away.

Taking note of the fact that Inuyasha had at least seen enough to shut him up, Shippo allowed the scene to melt once more into another—this one in a cemetery.

A somber crowd of people dressed in black were huddled together beneath ebony umbrellas, dabbing discreetly at their eyes as they watched a polished wooden casket being lowered into the ground. With the slate-colored sky, the sea of gravestones that covered the hillside, and the black-clad mourners, the scene looked almost monochrome. The only hint of color was the green grass, but even that was dark and drab in the rain.

As the ceremony concluded, the people trickled off one by one, until only the young Inuyasha and his father remained. In spite of himself, the older Inuyasha couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from his father, who stared down at the place where his wife had just been laid to rest. The man’s face betrayed no emotion, as usual—but then, for a moment, Inuyasha saw his father’s gaze shift to his younger self, and it looked as though he was about to speak.

But something stopped him—the words didn’t come. Instead, he merely patted his son on the shoulder awkwardly and turned to walk away, heading back down the hill toward the waiting limousine. The young hanyou stared after him.

The older Inuyasha suddenly realized that his jaw had tensed, his brow furrowed as he watched his younger self intensely. No—no more. This was getting out of hand. He had to put a stop to it. Shaking himself slightly to rid himself of the unwanted emotions, he turned to Shippo, who was perched on a nearby headstone. “Alright—enough of this shit. Either you get off this fucking train of thought and show me something relevant, or I’m going home.”

The kitsune made an “oh _really?_ ” face, and said, “And you’re planning to accomplish that…how, exactly?”

Inuyasha narrowed his eyes dangerously and gritted, “I’ll find a way—I _promise_ you…”

Unimpressed, Shippo rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright, don’t worry—I was planning to move on anyway.”

With a wave of his hand, the grey-tinted hillside peeled away like the page of a book, revealing behind it the much brighter world of a high school classroom.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Inuyasha grumbled as they stepped forward into this new memory.

The afternoon sun slanted in through the windows lining one side of the room, its edge gradually creeping further and further across the floor as time passed. The only sounds to be heard were the scritch-scratching of the teacher’s chalk, the faint hum of the air conditioner, and the sound of pencils copying down the occasional note.

A teenaged Inuyasha was slumped down in his desk at the back of the room, his legs stretched out on the empty chair in front of him, his eyelids drooping lazily. Every so often he would almost doze off, but then the weight of his own head falling back would rouse him again, leaving him to stare blurrily at the front board and the jumble of incomprehensible white marks the teacher was using to decorating it.

“Not exactly top of your class, were you?” Shippo snarked, and Inuyasha responded by shoving him unceremoniously off his shoulder. “Hey! Is that any way to treat someone who has the power to leave you stranded as a ghost in your own memories?”

“Feh. Just get on with it already. What are we supposed to see this time?”

Dusting himself off and hopping up onto the windowsill this time instead, Shippo replied, “You’ll see. Just be patient. I know that’s not exactly your forte, but give it a try…”

At some cosmic cue, the bell signaled the end of class, and the room was suddenly filled with the shuffling and conversation of students thanking god for the reprieve from their daily boredom. The teacher reminded them in vain to study for the upcoming test, but her comments were more or less ignored, the students’ minds already out in the parking lot and on their way home by now.

The younger Inuyasha took his time getting up from his chair and stretching, getting ready to leave. He seemed to be in no rush to get anywhere.

The crowd had thinned out by now, leaving behind only a couple of stragglers, and it was then that the older Inuyasha noticed something that had escaped him before—and all at once, he knew exactly where he was and why.

“Oh fuck…” he muttered under his breath, not sure whether he was more angry or afraid. But since being afraid of something so stupid was out of the question, he decided he must be angry. “Get us out of here,” he snapped at his pint-sized guide. “Now.”

Shippo raised an eyebrow, clearly having no intention of doing any such thing. “You remember it now, don’t you…”

“I said get me the fuck out of here, and I meant it—I don’t want to see her.”

But the kitsune only shrugged. “Tough luck. Sometimes things don’t work out quite the way we want them to.”

Inuyasha glared at Shippo a moment longer—but since, all told, there was really nothing he could do, he soon found his attention drawn back to the scene at hand. Maybe it was just the masochist in him, but as much as he didn’t want to see, hear, or think about her ever again, he couldn’t help but watch.

The young hanyou slung his backpack over his shoulder and moved toward the front of the classroom. Unfortunately, the young woman who had been sitting near the front of the row happened to step backward from her desk to leave at exactly the wrong moment, causing her to back up right into him.

“Oh! Excuse me,” she apologized in surprise. Her voice was exactly as he had tried not to remember it, impossibly smooth, yet confident and strong. “I didn’t see you there. Inuyasha, isn’t it?”

Inuyasha’s younger self nodded. “And you’re Kikyo. I’ve seen you around.”

“Weren’t you in my bio class last semester?” she asked.

Inuyasha unconsciously mouthed the response along with his other self. “Yeah—I sat behind you. Mr. Farnsworth, room 202.”

“Right,” Kikyo said with a smile, “Room 202.”

“Have you seen enough?” Shippo asked, reminding the hanyou of his presence.

“Plenty,” he grunted.

“You know what’s coming next, don’t you?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Inuyasha replied, the world around him transforming itself even as he spoke. The golden yellows blurred into reds, and soon they were back where they had started—in his father’s cavernous study at his childhood home.

This time, however, there was no bassinet. No adoring parents, no indulgent friends—no blue flowered dress. Inuyasha’s father sat at his impressive oak desk facing his son. The years showed in the man’s face, in every line and crease of his skin, as well as in his eyes, which were stern, and without warmth or compassion.

Inuyasha grimaced—he had been afraid of this. Shippo, for his part, seemed to feel that the scene spoke for itself, and had chosen to leave well enough alone, for once.

Or perhaps his silence was due to the fact that he knew he was very close to getting a good beating…

“Inuyasha…look at me when I’m talking to you, dammit!” the older man demanded firmly, and the young hanyou lifted golden eyes to meet his father’s sharp gaze. “Did I not tell you that something like this would happen?” When Inuyasha failed to respond, he said fiercely, “ _Answer me_.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied dully.

“And yet, despite my warnings, you felt that it was appropriate to run off and elope with this woman—this woman who I _unequivocally_ deemed unfit to be your wife?”

“Yes, sir.”

The older man heaved a heavy, disappointed sigh and settled back into his desk chair, the finely-oiled leather creaking beneath him. “I should disinherit you for this,” he said coldly. “If you are not responsible enough to know when you are being deceived, you certainly cannot be trusted with the future of our estate, much less our corporation. But I will not disinherit you—not just yet. As long as you prove that you can learn from your mistakes.”

The silence was tense and uncomfortable, filled with the clear indication that the boy was on probation, and would be for some time.

“You are dismissed,” the elder Takahashi said, and young Inuyasha rose to leave, clearly not wanting to remain in that room a moment longer than necessary. “And Inuyasha,” his father’s voice stopped him just as he reached the door. “Remember: The best way to avoid showing your weaknesses is not to have them.”


	4. Grande Cafe Mocha

“Tall decaf cappuccino,” said an unfamiliar voice, and soon the ambient sounds of cappuccino machines and conversation filled in around them. The coffee shop was alive with the activity typical of a weekday, customers lined up halfway across the room waiting their turns for a much-needed afternoon shot of legal stimulants. Outside, the sounds of city traffic and scads of pedestrians filtered in through the doorway as people came and went, and the window at the far western end of the shop revealed the verdant corner of Washington Square Park.

Shippo gave a small moan. “Starbucks…you know, you people really don’t appreciate how good you have it, being alive and all. I always get to smell the stuff, but I’ve never been able to taste it. I mean, Starbucks didn’t even exist until hundreds of years after I died…”

“Feh. You’re dead—don’t you get to eat ambrosia or something?”

“Only if you’re a Greek god, dumbass—even _I_ knew that when I was alive.”

“Well sorry if I’m not up on my mythology trivia,” Inuyasha snapped grumpily, but Shippo could tell he took comfort in the bickering. After all, it wasn’t every day a guy had to relive all of the most painful moments of his life. He figured he could cut him a little slack.

“Whatever. I assume you recognize this place?”

“‘Course I do. It’s the Starbucks on West 4th—I used to come here all the time when I was at NYU.”

“Uh huh…is that all?” Shippo prompted slyly.

Inuyasha narrowed his gaze on the kitsune. “I get the feeling you already know everything, so what’s the point in telling you?”

“Touché. Alright then, we’ll make this simple. Who’s that?” he asked innocently, pointing out a silver-haired, dog-eared figure who was stretched out at a table in the corner, his feet resting on the empty chair opposite him, a textbook propped on his lap.

“That’s me,” Inuyasha humored the kit.

“And who’s that?” Shippo pointed out the petite, dark-haired girl who was working one of the registers—though she seemed more interested in observing the hanyou sitting over in the corner than in taking people’s orders.

Inuyasha’s expression turned guarded when he set eyes on her; it was the first time he had seen her (albeit in memory) since finding the note she had left for him the night before, and the sight affected him more than he was willing to admit—though he wasn’t sure he could specify how, even if he cared to try. “That’s Kagome.”

Around them, the world seemed to speed up, as though someone had pressed the fast-forward button. The sun set and rose and set again in a matter of moments, time only slowing again to its normal speed when the sky was dark, and only a few late-night studiers and one or two post-theatre couples remained.

The door opened, and the young hanyou stepped in from the chilly evening air, walking up to the register—but before he could place his order, the young woman behind the counter did it for him. “Grande café mocha, no whipped cream, right?” she asked, grinning when his expression registered surprise.

“Yes,” he replied, clearly thrown off-guard. “How did you know?”

“You always order the same thing.”

“Well, yeah,” he replied gruffly, “but I didn’t expect you to _remember_ it…”

The older Inuyasha watched the exchange with an attempted dispassion, trying very hard not to ask himself the obvious questions: Where did we go wrong? How did something as simple as a cup of coffee get so completely fucked up? When did things get so far out of hand? But the thought that weighed most heavily on his mind—the only one he couldn’t ignore—was that this memory, which had always been one of the few purely good memories in his pitiful collection, would never be quite the same. It had always been their beginning; now, it was the beginning of their end.

Kagome handed the freshly-prepared coffee to Inuyasha’s younger self, and the hanyou nodded his thanks, taking up residence in his usual spot and opening a book to begin reading.

A few minutes passed, in which Kagome went about her business behind the counter, straightening and cleaning and refilling, glancing over at him every so often as though wrestling with her conscience—or, perhaps, her inhibitions. Finally, she seemed to make a decision.

Circling around the end of the counter, she approached the younger Inuyasha where he sat.

“What are you reading?”

Inuyasha looked up, startled. “Oh—uh, it’s for lit class.”

“You’re reading _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ in your lit class?” Kagome questioned skeptically, inspecting the cover as she took a seat across from him.

“What’s wrong with _Harry Potter_?” he replied defensively.

“Nothing, nothing—I mean, it’s just not really ‘lit class’ material, is it?”

“It’s a pop literature course—we look at stuff that’s popular and compare it to the classics.”

“Oh…so it’s like a study of the artistic differences between the popular and the scholarly?”

“Something like that. I guess the point is that studying popular stuff tells us more about the general culture than studying the more obscure stuff. So it’s like halfway between a lit course and a sociology course—or something.”

“Interesting—I’ll have to look into that one next semester.”

“You’re a student here too?”

Kagome nodded. “Communications major at Steinhardt. You?”

“I’m at Stern.”

“Ooh, what field?”  


“My dad owns a media conglomerate—my brother and I are going to co-own it once he retires.”  


“You don’t sound too excited about that.”

Inuyasha shrugged. “What’s to be excited about? It’s big business. I get a cushy corner office, a big fat salary, and I get to boss people around all day—that’s about it.”

“Most people would consider that a pretty good prospect,” Kagome said with a smile.

“Yeah, well, most people aren’t me.”

“Very true.”

They met each others’ gaze for the briefest of moments, and then broke contact—but even from this odd, third-person perspective, Inuyasha felt an echo of what he had felt in that first moment. It had been like leaning just a little too far over the railing at the Grand Canyon—terrifying, but exciting at the same time.

“You make a cute couple,” Shippo commented offhandedly. Inuyasha did not reply, so the kitsune decided to continue. “Shame the way things have turned out though. Wonder if there was something you could have done differently, some way you could have fixed things before they went wrong…”

Inuyasha still did not reply.

“Well,” Shippo said in a “lets get this show on the road” tone of voice, “too late now, eh? Come on, places to go, people to see…”

But even as the scene bled away into somewhere else, Inuyasha didn’t take his eyes off of Kagome until she had completely disappeared.

There was snow on the ground, though only a very thin layer remained on the asphalt paths that covered most of the park—and even that would most likely disappear as soon as the gentle snowstorm ceased—but the grass was hidden by a thick blanket of the light, fluffy substance, and the bare trees glistened with it in the light of the moon and the street lamps. From where they stood in the center of the park, beside the large sunken ring—a dry fountain, and a popular seating area when the weather was nice—that sat in the shadow of the famed arch, they could easily ignore the sounds of evening traffic and the tail-lights and stoplights winking at them through the trees.

“Okay, so,” Shippo rubbed his hands together and pushed up his sleeves, “now we’re getting to the good stuff. I assume you know this place?”

“Seeing as we’re only about ten feet from where we were before,” Inuyasha groused, “yeah, I think I vaguely recall it.”

“Good,” Shippo said cheerfully, purposefully ignoring his charge’s petulant disposition. “Then I’m sure you won’t be surprised by what happens next.”

He heard her laughter dancing on the breeze, and turned to face the arch—only to see himself and Kagome rounding the corner to take the shortcut through the park, arm-in-arm and clearly enjoying each other’s company. The grin he saw spread across his own younger face creased his older brow resentfully.

“Well she wasn’t _doing_ anything—she was just standing there!” the younger Inuyasha exclaimed as they circled the dry fountain, approaching their unseen observers.

“It’s called a tableau, Inuyasha—you’re not supposed to move,” Kagome pointed out, laughing again.

“I still don’t get it. I mean, what’s the point of having people up on a stage not moving? Isn’t that what photos are for?”

Kagome grinned and slipped her arm around her companion’s waist comfortably. “Alright, alright, so it wasn’t a _great_ show…”

“Feh. It was fuckin’ stupid. Next time I get to pick.”

“Oh no, that’s how we ended up seeing _Swordfish_.”

“What? It was a good movie,” the hanyou protested.

“It was icky.”

“‘Icky?’ You didn’t like it because it was ‘ _icky?_ ’” he teased.

She stepped in front of him with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face, blocking his path and forcing him to stop. “I like romantic comedies. Call me a sap.”

“You’re a sap.”

She shoved him playfully, and he laughed, snatching her by the wrist and pulling her over to take a seat beside him on the lip of the dry fountain. For a moment they sat in comfortable silence, Inuyasha’s arm around Kagome’s waist, her head resting on his shoulder. The older Inuyasha smiled in spite of himself at the sight, remembering the way the chilled stone had frozen his ass off through his jeans, and yet he hadn’t even thought about getting up. How long had it been since he had laughed like that? How long since silence had been so easy?

When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and somewhat hesitant, but he could hear the words before they left her mouth.

“Inuyasha, can I ask you something?”

“Hm,” his younger counterpart replied, not paying full attention just yet.

She turned her head to look up at him. “What happened with Kikyo?”

Now she had her companion’s attention. He looked down at her, his expression all at once troubled, hovering somewhere between fear and annoyance. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he replied, perhaps a little more harshly than he intended, and he turned his gaze back to the trees opposite them.

“I think you do,” Kagome murmured.

“So do I,” said Shippo in the older Inuyasha’s ear, and the incorporeal hanyou answered him with a razor sharp glance before turning back to the scene at hand.

His younger self seemed to be teetering on the edge of a reply, until finally Kagome managed to tip the scales. “Please?”

The man sitting on the stone barrier released a sigh. “I made a stupid mistake, and I paid for it—that’s what happened with Kikyo.” For a moment it sounded like he was going to leave it at that—but now that the subject was open, there was no point in shutting it away again. “We started dating during senior year of high school. She was really beautiful; I’d never known a girl that beautiful before—at least not one that would talk to me. And we did a hell of a lot more than talk…

“So all of a sudden I went from being all alone to having this beautiful, smart girl who wanted to be with me all the time, and I thought I was in love. And so I married her, even though my old man thought she was no good for me. Hell, maybe I did it _because_ he thought she was no good for me.”

“So what happened?” Kagome prompted when he paused.

“Kikyo happened. Two months after we were married, she ran out on me. And then when she sued for divorce, she tried to take me for every penny my _father_ was worth. She could have gotten it too—she had a lot of dirt on us that my dad didn’t want getting around, but his lawyers were able to wrangle a minimal settlement.”

“That’s awful,” she breathed, unconsciously moving a bit closer as though to comfort him.

“Feh. It was my own fault—I shouldn’t have trusted her in the first place. What the hell was I thinking getting married at eighteen anyway? The whole mess was just an idiotic mistake.”

“I think it’s romantic.” Kagome gave him a small smile when he peered down at her quizzically.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No really, I do. There’s nothing stupid about loving someone, Inuyasha. You just have to pick more carefully next time.”

When his eyes met hers again, there was a different sort of expression in them—something soft, and uncharacteristically unguarded—and he bent down to press his lips against hers, gently, slowly. Her head tilted to the side, deepening the embrace, and her hand rested tenderly at the nape of his neck, as though to keep him from moving away.

Their lips parted, though their foreheads remained touching. If the older Inuyasha had not already known this conversation by heart, he might not have been able to make out the next words.

“Do you want me to walk you home—or…do you want to come back to my place?”

She smiled softly. “I’d like that.”

The breeze picked up momentarily, sweeping the fallen snowflakes at the older Inuyasha’s feet up into the air and swirling them around, obscuring his vision until the whole world seemed to consist of white. Then, just as suddenly as they had been disturbed, the flakes cleared and blew away into oblivion, leaving Inuyasha and Shippo standing at the back of a long nave, pew upon pew before them filled with people dressed in black.

“My dad’s funeral,” Inuyasha answered before Shippo could ask the question.

“Finally coming around now, are we?” Shippo grinned complacently; but Inuyasha didn’t rise to the jibe, his attention captivated by a silver head sitting on the aisle in the front-most pew. Sesshoumaru’s stoic form was utterly still throughout the conclusion of the ceremony, never shifting position, never giving any sign of a reaction to what was going on around him. Granted, his brother wasn’t exactly the demonstrative type, but even for him there was something unnatural in his stillness—as though the funeral were his own, and not someone else’s. Inuyasha wondered why he hadn’t noticed that at the time.

“Wow…lot of rich old people here…” Shippo mused, scanning the sea of posh black hats and the occasional dyed fur coat or the glint of diamonds peeking from beneath a collar.

“Who else would a rich old jackass be friends with?” Inuyasha spat.

Shippo arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t get along with your father very well, did you?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Course I have—just making sure you were. This isn’t for my benefit, you know.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Inuyasha conceded, shrugging so that Shippo swayed on his shoulder perch. “My Dad was a grim, hard-nosed old bastard, and after he died, my brother turned out to be just like him—but worse.”

“Did he now? Interesting…”

“What?” Inuyasha demanded, turning to the kitsune defensively.

“Oh nothing, nothing,” the kit replied nonchalantly, causing Inuyasha to snatch him up by his tail and hold him upside-down in front of his face.

“Would you _quit doing that?_ ” he growled.

“What?” Shippo asked oh-so-innocently, and Inuyasha gave him a shake.

“That smug little ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know’ thing. If you got something to say, just say it already!”

“The ceremony’s ending.”

“Wha?” Inuyasha frowned, nonplussed, only to jump in surprise when an elderly lady in a black tailored suit walked straight through his infuriating little spirit guide and on through Inuyasha himself. He hastily stepped aside out of the aisle so as not to repeat the odd experience as the rest of the mourners filed out of the church in affected solemnity. Their grim faces were belied by the occasional checking of a watch.

Only the last few people to leave—those who had been sitting toward the front of the nave—seemed genuinely sorrowful, though even they did not exhibit a great deal of sadness over the passing of this man. Inuyasha saw himself and Kagome trailing along with the crowd, followed by his best friend and future business associate, Miroku, and Miroku’s then-girlfriend—later his wife—Sango. He noticed that Miroku and Sango were both watching his younger self, as though wary of a possible outburst, and Kagome’s fingers were laced comfortingly with his, her eyes slightly reddened in the wake of quiet tears. But his face was closed, betraying no emotion other than a careful indifference.

It wasn’t until Sesshoumaru—the last to leave—passed by that Inuyasha’s insides gave a frightful lurch: because only then did he notice the eerie resemblance between his brother’s stoic profile and his own.

“You see it now, don’t you?” Shippo asked seriously, noticing the shock on the older Inuyasha’s face.

“See what?” Inuyasha replied stubbornly; but he couldn’t hide the fact that he continued to stare openly at Sesshoumaru as he exited the church.

“Don’t play coy with me,” Shippo nudged, as the room around them dimmed and shifted and began to reassemble itself. “You know precisely what I’m talking about.”

“So? So we look a little alike—so what?”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

“It was a funeral—everybody comes out looking a little depressed after a downer like that,” he protested, and finally Shippo gave a sigh.

“Alright, alright, we’ll move on…”

They were back at Starbucks again, but this time the sun was slanting cheerfully through the windows, a splash of fresh, spring greenery visible in the corner of the park across the street. Students dressed for the coming summer filtered in and out in a steady stream, chatting in equal measure about finals and the highly-anticipated break.

“Next,” called out the familiar voice from behind the register. Shippo and Inuyasha turned to see the younger Inuyasha step up to the counter, his presence eliciting a smile from the woman facing him.

“And what can I get for you today, sir?” Kagome asked playfully.

“Grande Café Mocha, no whipped cream,” he replied, smiling back.

“Excellent choice,” Kagome grinned at him, a sparkle in her eye. “Anything else?”

“Just one thing, actually,” said Inuyasha, digging into his jeans pocket and pulling a small, square, velvet box, which he set on the counter between them. “Would you marry me?”

Kagome’s eyes went wide, her mouth hanging open slightly as she stared at the box, and then up at him, clearly wondering if this was some sort of joke. But when the look in his eyes and the small, slightly nervous smile on his face told her he was serious, she broke into the most brilliant grin that either Inuyasha had ever seen.

“Yes! Oh my god, of course I will!” she exclaimed, pushing herself up onto the counter and throwing her arms around his neck with a kiss. The younger Inuyasha laughed into her embrace as he pulled her down onto his side of the counter, and the students crowded into the coffee shop clapped and whooped good-naturedly. Reminded of their audience, the couple turned a brilliant shade of pink, and Kagome hid her face against Inuyasha’s chest, but neither could keep from smiling ear to ear.

“Aww…that’s adorable!” Shippo commented, nudging Inuyasha in the side of the head. “Never woulda guessed you had it in you, big guy.”

“Oh shut the fuck up,” Inuyasha grumped, though his own cheeks had reddened slightly at the memory of this day. It had been an uncharacteristically bold move indeed, he had to admit that. Granted, he was impulsive by nature when it came to ordinary matters, but he’d never been the sort of guy who was comfortable showing his feelings in such a public setting. Looking back, a part of him couldn’t believe he’d actually had the guts to do it this way—but something about Kagome just seemed to bring it out in him.

He shook himself mentally—there was no sense dwelling on that kind of thing now. After all, this had all happened a very long time ago. Maybe _too_ long ago…


	5. For Better or Worse

They were in a swanky reception room filled with inane chatter and the unobtrusively jazzy tinkle of a piano somewhere in the background. The mahogany-paneled walls were decorated with red and green velvet draperies strung from the chandeliers, giving the room a sophisticatedly festive appearance. Tables covered in white linen and surrounded by chairs that matched the deep, pine-forest green of the décor lined the outer edge of the room, and in the center people in fine eveningwear mixed and mingled.

“I hate these stupid things. Kagome always makes me go.” Inuyasha pulled a revolted face as he surveyed the crowd. “At least I don’t have to worry about ‘keeping up appearances’ this time,” he muttered, reaching out an incorporeal hand and pretending to tweak the nose of a smug, snooty-looking woman who happened to be standing near him.

“Well, you are one of the top executives in the company—how would it look if you didn’t show up at the Christmas parties?” Shippo pointed out.

“Like I had something better to do than make stupid small talk with people I don’t give a rat’s ass about?”

“Exactly.”

Inuyasha frowned, confused. “Did I miss something?”

“You just weren’t listening to yourself. It would look like you didn’t give a rat’s ass about your employees—also known as the people who make your stupid, useless, insanely rich life possible.”

“Hey, I give to registered charities!”

“I’m not talking about charities—I’m talking about the people you see every day. Anyone can write a check, Inuyasha, but as the head of the company, you control a huge part of these people’s lives—and if they thought you didn’t give a rat’s ass about them, they probably wouldn’t hang around too long. People are funny like that—they don’t like to stay where they’re not appreciated.”

Inuyasha didn’t answer, instead turning his attention back to the crowd before him and noticing once again his younger—though not all _that_ much younger—self standing nearby talking to Miroku about some deal they were trying to close. He thought it might have been the Brookman deal, which would make this about three years ago, but he couldn’t hear enough of the conversation to tell. All the various deals tended to involve similar pieces.

“So what are we here to see? I don’t remember anything important happening at this party,” Inuyasha mumbled with a frown.

Shippo grinned. “Exactly—which is why we had to come here to see it. Look over there.”

Following the kit’s pointing finger, the hanyou noticed a pair of women standing just a few feet to his right—within earshot of his younger self, though he was plainly not paying the slightest bit of attention.

Kagome was watching the younger Inuyasha with a somewhat troubled expression on her face, her glass of champagne resting forgotten in one hand, when Sango prompted her out of her reverie. “Something the matter?”

“Hm? Oh, not really. It’s just—he’s been so caught up with Miroku, I don’t think he’s said two words to me since we got here.”

Sango smiled, trying to cheer her friend up. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m just glad Miroku’s talking to Inuyasha and not Gloria Marcus.” At Kagome’s questioning look, she elaborated, “The new exec. in the finance division—leggy, blonde, big breasts, your classic Barbie doll. I’m not worried though—he knows he’ll get it good if he so much as gives her a second look. I’ve got him pretty well trained.”

Kagome laughed, but she still seemed somewhat glum, so Sango decided to try a different tack. “He’s got a lot on his plate, Kagome. And besides, you know Inuyasha—he’s not really comfortable in crowds like this, mixing and mingling.”

“Well I wouldn’t mind if—no,” she stopped herself, taking a sip of her now-flat champagne and shrugging off the subject. “I shouldn’t really be talking about this. I mean, you don’t want to listen to me complaining about my little problems on Christmas.”

“No, no really—it’s alright, tell me. In case you haven’t noticed,” she swept an arm out, indicating the room, “we’re about the most interesting thing going on at this party anyway.”

Kagome laughed and conceded with a nod. “You have a point. Well,” she took another sip of champagne, and Inuyasha suspected she was stalling for time, “the thing is—I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like he’s been…pulling away from me lately. Not just at parties and things like this, but when we’re at home, alone.”

“How so?”

“It’s hard to explain. I mean, there’s no one thing that I can point to—I just feel like I don’t hear his voice as much as I used to. And I know he’s been busy with the promotion, and this is always a busy time of year anyway—but something is different than it was before, and I don’t know what I can do to change it back.”

“Probably not much, I’m afraid,” Sango confided with a wry smile. “But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Granted, we’ve only been married a little longer than you two have, so I suppose I’m no authority—but Miroku and I have had our rough patches too, and things have always gotten better. Hell, our whole first year was pretty much one big fight after another—he had a little trouble adjusting to the whole idea of ‘one woman for the rest of his life’—but we got through it, and our relationship is stronger now because of it.”

Kagome was now running a fingertip absently around the lip of her nearly-empty champagne flute, staring over at Inuyasha without really seeing him. “Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. It’s just hard to know what to do to make sure we swim instead of sinking.”

“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure of it. You and Inuyasha love each other, and as long as you have that, anything is fixable.”

The older Inuyasha found himself captivated by Sango’s advice, and despite his barely-held façade of indifference, he couldn’t help taking heart at her words. As long as they loved each other, anything was fixable. Anything. It was a comforting notion, and one he wanted very much to believe.

“Seen enough?” Shippo asked, and Inuyasha jumped slightly. He’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he replied distractedly—and at his words, the world wavered and rippled again as though being washed away in the rain, revealing another world underneath: Their apartment.

Kagome was in the kitchen, collecting their breakfast dishes in the sink, trying not to spill any of the leftovers on her white button-down blouse as she straightened up. Finishing with the dishes, she grabbed the copy of the New York Times that was sitting on the counter and pulled it toward her, and as she did so, several of the inner sections came loose and scattered across the carpet on the opposite side of the counter. She made a sound of annoyance and knelt to collect the strewn papers hastily—but something caught her eye, and she paused, pulling one section apart from the others and peering at it in concern.

“What is it?” Inuyasha’s voice came from the bedroom door, behind where Shippo and the older Inuyasha stood observing.

“Ah…it’s nothing,” Kagome said quickly, though not particularly convincingly, and continued to pick up the papers, attempting to lose the one that had given her pause in the shuffle. But Inuyasha was too quick for her; he crossed the room in three strides and plucked the section of the paper out of her clutching fingers, turning it around to examine the headline she had been perusing.

All at once, the mild grin slipped from his face. Over his shoulder, Shippo and the older Inuyasha could see the article as well, though both of them already knew what it said—it had come back to Inuyasha immediately when he’d heard Kagome speak.

It was the Style section, and the top story on the page was headed by an impressive black-and-white photograph of a stunning brunette in an elegant white gown grinning beatifically up at her equally stunning new husband. Beneath the photo, the caption read: “Publishing mogul and head of Amatext Incorporated, Naraku Fujiwara, and his bride, Kikyo Kobayashi (in an exquisite Vera Wang original), as they finally tie the knot.”

Stepping closer to his younger self, Inuyasha could make out a few lines from one of the columns of the article: “Ms. Kobayashi—now Mrs. Fujiwara—received a bit of press attention a few years ago when her brief and ultimately overly-hasty marriage to Inuyasha Takahashi (now Co-Chief Executive of Tetcom Telecommunications Inc.) ended in a shambles. Now it appears she’s back in the spotlight, this time under much happier circumstances. Here’s hoping her second marriage fares better than her first…”

For his part, the younger Inuyasha had yet to move a muscle. Kagome stood slowly, watching him anxiously for a reaction. When he still said nothing, she seemed to decide that it was up to her to break the silence.

“I’m sorry, Inuyasha.”

“It’s fine,” he said flatly, folding up the paper and tossing it down onto the counter, though still not quite looking at her.

“Inuyasha—”

“I said it’s fine,” he repeated, a bit more forcefully this time, and she pressed her lips together in response. They could see him deflate, and then he said contritely, “I’m sorry. It’s really not a big deal. I have to get going, alright?” He turned away, retrieving his suit coat from where it was draped over the back of the couch and shrugging it on.

“When are you planning to be home?”

He straightened the collar and lapels of his coat. “Not too late,” he checked his watch. “Eight or Nine, probably.”

“I was thinking maybe we could meet for dinner…”

“I can’t tonight,” he answered, scanning the room for his briefcase, “I’m having dinner with a couple of representatives from Viacom. I’ll see you when I get home though.”

“Well then maybe we could ride down together—”

“Sorry, I’ve really got to go,” he interrupted, stepping forward and giving her a kiss on the forehead before brushing past her toward the door, grabbing his briefcase as he went—never once looking her in the eye. “I’ll see you tonight. Love you,” he called back to her absentmindedly, just before the door shut crisply behind him.

“I love you, too.” Kagome stared morosely after him a moment, and then bent down to finish picking up the spilled papers and stack them haphazardly on the counter for later sorting. Soon she had grabbed her coat and purse and briefcase and was out the door as well.

The snap of the door seemed to act as a trigger, and the room blurred horizontally, like scenery observed through the window of a bullet train, before righting itself again. It was the same room, but now it was filled with the yellow-orange glow of approaching evening, and a few small details had been changed: the previously brown suede couch and loveseat were now beige leather, and scattered around the room were knick-knacks that had not been present before—a crystal vase here, a set of antique bookends there—each and every one a gift that he had given to Kagome in apology for one thing or another. He’d never noticed how many they had accumulated until now.

“No way—no way in hell, Kagome, I’m not going!” Inuyasha’s younger self bellowed from over near the TV. Kagome was standing with arms crossed on the other side of the couch facing him, dressed in a simple black evening gown with her hair swept up behind her head. Inuyasha, on the other hand, was wearing old NYU sweats and a grey T-shirt.

“Inuyasha, you promised,” Kagome said fiercely, clearly holding on to her temper by a very thin threat.

“I did not!”

“You did!” she burst out, the thread breaking. “You absolutely did! God, I should have known this was going to happen—you don’t listen to a single word I say!”

“Fuck that! I always listen to you—in fact you won’t let me _stop_ listening to you every minute of every fucking day! Why does there always have to be something I have to do or say or someplace I have to go? I’ve had a really fucking shitty day and I’m not moving from this spot for anything but a nuclear holocaust!”

Kagome threw up her hands, growling in frustration and disgust. “You are so selfish, you know that?” she gritted out, her voice shaking with anger. “It’s absolutely unbelievable. I don’t ask for much, but when you tell me you’ll do something, I expect you to do it!”

“I never said I would go!”

“Yes you did! Goddammit Inuyasha, why do we have to keep having this same fight every time? I mean, it shouldn’t be this _hard!_ ”

“What shouldn’t?” he snapped, turning away and running a hand through his hair.

“This! Us! Our relationship! Doesn’t it seem like there’s something wrong here? Hojo keeps telling me—”

“Hojo?” he rounded on her, looking livid. “You’ve been talking to _Hojo?_ ”

“Well why shouldn’t I? He’s a friend—and unlike you, he listens to—”

“Don’t you point the finger at me when you’ve been sneaking around behind my back!” he interrupted.

Kagome stiffened, staring at him in furious disbelief. When she spoke again, her words were tight. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“You know damn well what I’m saying,” he spat recklessly.

She paused before speaking again, her gaze still leveled at him, and utterly serious. “Think very carefully about what you’re doing here, Inuyasha, because you’re crossing a very dangerous line.”

“Feh.”

“I’m serious! Now I’m going to this charity dinner, and you can sit here and rot for all I care—but while I’m gone, I want you to think seriously about what you just said to me. I’ll speak to you again when I get home, but right now I can’t spend one more second in this room with you.” And with that, she grabbed her wrap and her small satin purse from the back of the couch and disappeared out the door, Inuyasha scowling after her.

“God, you really are a jackass,” Shippo mused.

“Excuse me?” Inuyasha huffed.

“It’s a wonder she’s put up with you this long, seriously.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Inuyasha grumbled, shoving Shippo off his shoulder so that he went flying swiftly through a nearby table lamp.

Picking himself up and brushing imaginary dust from his hakama, Shippo grinned. “Guess I struck a nerve…”

A key turned in the lock, and Kagome walked into the empty living room with a small, weary sigh.

“That was fast,” Inuyasha commented, bewildered, only just now realizing that his younger self was no longer in the room, though he had not seen him leave.

“What, you’d rather sit here for the entire three hours and watch yourself think?” Shippo replied as he climbed skillfully up Inuyasha’s side, coming to settle on his head this time. Inuyasha cast an annoyed glance at the little furball now perched between his ears, but he grudgingly decided to let him be.

Slipping off her heels by the door and folding up her black silk wrap, Kagome padded to the kitchen counter. Her keys clunked against the marble as she set them down beside her purse and wrap, and she began shuffling idly through the stack of mail that had been collecting there over the past couple of days.

“Kagome?” The younger Inuyasha’s voice was quiet, and Kagome looked up to see him standing somewhat awkwardly in the bedroom doorway. Her face was expressionless as she waited for him to speak, and he took his cue. “I’m sorry. I was angry, and I said some really stupid things, and…well, I’m just sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

She looked at him a moment longer, considering, still giving no indication of whether she planned to accept his apology or not. Inuyasha’s tension was visible as he waited for the other shoe to drop. Finally, she released a breath, tilting her head and giving him a small, wan smile—it wasn’t a leap of joy, but he understood that at least he was forgiven.

With a small sigh of relief, he crossed the room to pull her gently into his arms, and they rocked back and forth, mending their fences.

“What you said really hurt me, Inuyasha,” she murmured against his shoulder.

“I know…I’m sorry.”

“I know you think Hojo has a thing for me, and you don’t have to trust him—you don’t even have to like him—but if you don’t trust me…”

“I do, Kagome. I trust you…I swear…”

She settled a bit more deeply in his arms, closing her eyes as he stroked her hair, and they lapsed into reconciliatory silence again.

“Ha—see?” the older Inuyasha pointed out smugly. “I fixed it. So there.”

“Yeah, you’re a regular Sir Galahad,” Shippo said sarcastically.

“Who?”

“Nevermind…”

It was day again, all of a sudden, and Inuyasha noticed that his younger self was now reclined on the sofa with a bottle of imported beer, watching the end of a baseball game on television. The game itself seemed to have finished already, and now the commentators were trading inane banter about how good it had been and how the outcome affected the overall rankings. The younger Inuyasha shrugged indifferently and clicked off the TV with the remote, getting to his feet to stretch.

“Inuyasha?” Kagome said entering the room hesitantly.

“Hm?”

“I, um, need to tell you something…”

“What?” he murmured through a yawn.

“I’m pregnant.” He froze in mid-stretch, eyes widening slightly though they merely stared blankly into space. She watched him intently, if indirectly, holding her breath as she awaited his response.

“What?” He managed to drop his arms to his sides slowly and turned his vacant stare upon her.

“I’m pregnant,” she repeated quietly, practically begging him to smile, to say something, do _something_ to show that he was as happy as she was.

“How?” he asked dumbly, and she half-smiled at that in spite of herself.

“How do you think?”

But Inuyasha still looked shell-shocked, and Shippo and the older Inuyasha could see that she was starting to get worried now. The younger hanyou sank down onto the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, and continued to stare at some invisible specter in the general direction of the carpet.

She settled herself beside him and took his nearest hand in hers, drawing his attention back to her. “Hey,” she murmured, nudging him with her shoulder. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He shook his head bemusedly. “I’m thinking…there’s gotta be some mistake.”

Her shoulders dipped half an inch. “Why is that?”

“Because!” he burst out, making her jump as he suddenly got to his feet and started pacing the length of the coffee table in circles, “You just can’t be pregnant. I mean, we can’t have a…we can’t take care of—it—you just can’t be pregnant, that’s all.”

Kagome’s eyes followed him back and forth in his ranting, growing more troubled by the moment. “Well I am,” she said with a shrug.

“But—but we talked about this!” he babbled on. “We’re not ready yet—we decided…”

“I know—but sometimes these things just happen,” Kagome placated. “It’s done now, so what’s the point in worrying about how or why it happened? Why can’t we just be happy about this?”

“Because I’m not happy!” he snapped, not noticing the way Kagome’s jaw tensed at his harsh words. “It’s gonna change fucking everything, and I don’t want—dammit, I can’t take care of a kid, Kagome.”

“Well no one’s asking you to do it alone,” she argued back, getting to her feet and crossing her arms over her chest in an unconsciously protective gesture. “This is about both of us—we’re starting a family. God, think about it, Inuyasha—we’re going to have a _baby_ …”

An expression of sheer panic crossed his face like an electric current before he could suppress it with frustration and anger again. “I don’t want to think about it, okay? I just want to forget this ever happened.”

“It’s a little late for that,” she said darkly.

“I know. Fine, just—it’s gonna take me some time to get used to it. Just let me deal with it, okay? I’m going to Miroku’s.”

“Can’t you talk to me?”

“No,” he replied flatly, grabbing his keys out of the dish on the coffee table and heading for the door.

“Aw come on,” the older Inuyasha complained. “Seriously, Shippo, did you have to go into this shit?”

“Why not?”

“Because—it’s not fair! I mean, you make me look like some kind of a monster or something. Things weren’t bad between me and Kagome _all_ the time. I mean, sure, we had our fights—but dammit, we had some good times to!”

“And yet, she still left.”

“Well…yeah,” he admitted grudgingly. “So, what’s your point?”

“My point is that apparently she felt that the bad times outweighed the good ones. So maybe you ought to take a closer look at these bad times I’m showing you and see if you can see anything there you didn’t notice before.”

The overwhelming presence of all those apologetic knick-knacks around the apartment jumped to his mind again, a laundry list of all their worst fights, and he felt his jaw tense at the thought. But they _had_ had good times too—they _had_ …

The light breeze alerted them to the latest change of scenery: They were outside a comfortably-sized, sun-dappled house in the suburbs this time. The two-story, square façade was built mostly of brick, though the roof, windows, and door were trimmed with white, and the quaint colonial shutters matched the hunter green of the door. To the right was a two-car garage with a driveway that sloped steeply down to the street.

Standing directly in front of them on the front stoop was the younger Inuyasha. Even from behind, they could tell he was wound-up—especially by the way he was jabbing impatiently at the doorbell.

When the door finally opened, Miroku appeared on the other side seeming not particularly surprised to discover who had been responsible for the repeated doorbell ringing.

“Kagome’s pregnant,” the younger Inuyasha blurted out, before Miroku could say a word.

His friend grinned wryly. “I would say ‘congratulations,’ but somehow I get the feeling that’s not the response you’re looking for.”

But Inuyasha was barely paying attention as he brushed past him into the living room, the older Inuyasha and his spirit guide managing to squeeze in after him before Miroku shut the door—not that they couldn’t just walk through it if they had to, but after nearly thirty years of practice, being solid was a habit for Inuyasha.

“This can’t be happening. It just can’t be happening,” the younger Inuyasha said, pacing in circles around Miroku’s living room just as he had done in his own when she’d sprung the news on him less than an hour ago—only here he had to dodge a stray Lego or a storybook every now and then.

“Inuyasha, it’s okay—you’re married, remember? This is when pregnancy is a good thing.”

“Are you fucking out of your mind?” Inuyasha bellowed, making Miroku wince and cast a sidelong glance toward the upper floor, where his own young, impressionable child was playing—hopefully out of earshot. “I can’t be a…a…”

“Father?” Miroku supplied helpfully.

“Yeah. I mean, can you imagine me taking care of a kid?”

“Not at the moment…”

“Exactly! See, Kagome doesn’t get this. She doesn’t get what a huge fucking mess this is.”

Miroku resumed the straightening-up he had been doing before his friend had arrived, collecting the scattered Duplo blocks from under Inuyasha’s frenzied feet and tossing them into the plastic storage tub at his knee. “Why is it a mess?”

“Haven’t you been listening? Because she’s married to _me_ , that’s why! And there’s no way I can be a…a…”

“Father.”

“Right.”

“Inuyasha, just because you’re not the perfect father material right this minute doesn’t mean you won’t learn. I was no expert on kids before I had one either—you’re not supposed to be, yet.”

Inuyasha growled and kicked one of the Legos in frustration, sending it skittering off the carpet and across the wood floor toward the kitchen. Miroku gave him an exasperated look before setting off after it, but the hanyou was already too caught up in his next argument to notice. “But hell, Miroku, I can’t even take care of my golf clubs! The first day I used that new set Kagome gave me last Christmas I dropped the seven wood and made a huge dent in our dining room floor. You just wait, the second someone’s stupid enough to put the kid in my arms, I’ll drop it on its head.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Miroku replied, returning from the kitchen with the wayward Lego and tossing it into the bucket. “I know it’s hard to believe, but golf clubs and children are slightly different things. You’ll be fine, I promise you.”

“But…but what if…”

“What?”

Inuyasha sighed, murmuring miserably, “But what if…I end up screwing this kid up the way my old man did?”

Miroku observed him, considering; now they were getting to the heart of the issue. “Have you said any of this to Kagome?”

“Some of it.”

“Which part?”

Inuyasha shifted his weight, not meeting Miroku’s studious gaze. “Mainly the ‘this can’t be happening’ part…”

Miroku crossed his arms. “Well then what are you talking to me for? Go talk to your wife.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because—when we talk about stuff these days, it just turns into a fight.”

“Well maybe that’s because you respond to things like her telling you she’s pregnant by saying that ‘this can’t be happening.’”

“I was surprised! So sue me!”

“You’re allowed to be surprised—but you have to think about what she’s feeling too. All she probably needed from you was for you to tell her it was alright—and instead, you told her the opposite.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, you need to let Kagome know what’s going on.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s your _wife_ , Inuyasha. This isn’t just happening to you—it’s happening to both of you. And it might be a good idea to remember that she’s the one who’s actually going to have to go through pregnancy and labor. If anyone deserves to be scared, it’s Kagome. And where are you in all of this? Off complaining to someone else.”

“Alright, alright, fine—I’ll talk to her. But I can’t just yet. I just…need some time…”

Shippo chose that moment to chime in wryly, “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you never had that talk with Kagome.”

“Feh. Some guess—you’ve got a file on my life, cheater,” the older Inuyasha snapped back at him.

“Well I didn’t sit down and watch the whole thing beginning to end, you know. And quit trying to change the subject.”

“Alright, fine—no, I didn’t talk to her about it. I _meant_ to,” he added pointedly, smothering the kit’s next smart remark before it could pass his lips, “but…things just sort of got in the way. And then…”

“And then?” Shippo prompted.

But the scene had shifted once again. Now they were in a wide, linoleum-floored hallway lined with doors on either side, populated by doctors in scrubs and lab coats and the occasional robed patient. They only had a second to take in their surroundings before the younger Inuyasha streaked by them at a frantic pace, and they had no choice but to jog after him, trying to keep up.

Finally, as he was reaching the home stretch, a plump, red-haired nurse stepped away from the door that appeared to be his goal and into his path, putting up a hand to stop him gently.

“Where’s Kagome?” he demanded.

“She’s just fine, Mr. Takahashi,” she assured the very tense hanyou. “But…I’m afraid she’s lost the baby.”

“What?” Inuyasha’s eyes snapped to the nurse’s in alarm.

“She’s had a miscarriage. It’s not uncommon in the early stages of pregnancy, especially with a first pregnancy. I’m very sorry—she is distraught, but she’s suffered no physical damage.”

Inuyasha was staring at the closed door now, his expression grim, and somewhat guilty. “Thanks,” he murmured absently, bypassing the nurse and continuing at a somewhat sobered pace.

He opened the door to the hospital room as quietly as he could, and his invisible shadows followed him in. They could see the curve of her back and hip past the partially drawn curtain that separated her bed from the empty one nearer to the door. The younger Inuyasha approached her carefully, the smallest creak of his rubber-soled trainers echoing like a gong in the silence.

She was lying on her side, facing away from him, and although she was utterly still, and her breathing was slow and even, it was clear that she was not asleep. The older Inuyasha and Shippo moved to the window while the younger hanyou took a seat in the chair at her bedside, watching her stare unseeingly through the glass at the afternoon outside. The sunlight, already just beginning to wane, seemed a harsher gold than usual somehow, and the cloudless blue of the sky was just a little too clear, a little too sharp.

He reached out a hand and tucked a strand of hair gently behind her ear, apparently searching for something he could say. For a moment he seemed to teeter on the edge of something important, something significant—but all that came out was, “I’m sorry.” Then he bent forward and kissed her on the forehead, rising to leave. He didn’t see her eyelids flutter against her tears as she was deprived of the warmth of his hand.

But the older Inuyasha did.

Another rain-like dissolve, and they were in Inuyasha’s impressive corner office—well, it would have been more impressive if there hadn’t been files and files of financial reports and prospectuses and old documents and contracts stacked a meter high in various piles around the room, waiting to be properly stored. Outside, the sun shone through the clouds, reflecting off the windows of the surrounding office buildings and offering brief slivers of warmth to the people on the chilly street far below.

Inuyasha’s younger self sat at his desk, hunched over a document with a pen in one hand and a legal pad at his side, noting changes as he read.

“Shit…” Inuyasha breathed, dismayed as he noticed the date on the desk calendar. “Dammit, is this what I think it is?”

“Shhh—it’s starting,” Shippo hushed, pointing toward the desk as the phone began to ring. Inuyasha complied, crossing his arms against what he knew was coming as he turned his attention back to the memory.

The younger Inuyasha reached for the ringing phone without taking his eyes from the document. “Inuyasha Takahashi,” he answered.

Shippo flicked a finger discreetly toward the phone, and suddenly they could hear the other end of the call as well, as though it were on speakerphone.

“Mr. Takahashi, this is Dr. Cass at Mercy Hospital—I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Inuyasha’s eyes flicked up from the document with a concerned expression, his full attention on the call now.

“Your brother was involved in a car accident this afternoon,” the woman continued gravely, “and his injuries were quite severe. We did everything we could, but…he passed away a little less than an hour ago.”

He seemed to have been struck dumb, the voice from the other end of the line washing over him in disbelief.

“I’m very sorry for your loss—but you’re listed as his next of kin, and we’ll need you to come and identify the body and sign a few forms as soon as possible.”

There was a beat of silence, and the voice prompted, “Sir?”

“Yes,” Inuyasha replied finally, his voice seeming to stick slightly at first. He cleared his throat and continued, “Yes, I’ll come by this evening on my way home. Thank you.” He hung up without waiting for a reply, and then dropped his head into his hands, his brow tightly furrowed as though he were exerting great force against something, his breathing deep and thick. Then, suddenly, whatever was coiling inside of him seemed to snap like a whip, and he yelled out, “ _Dammit!_ ” banging a fist against his desk so hard that the entire thing shuddered, and Shippo winced involuntarily at the noise.

But as quickly as the outburst had swept over him, it began to subside, and he shoved back in his chair, jaw set, hands clenched tightly on the armrests, still breathing heavily and staring darkly at the fountain pen sitting on his desk. He remained in that stony position for what seemed like hours—and perhaps it truly was, only to have been sped up through the magic of memory—before the phone began to ring again.

He let it ring once, twice, three times. Finally, he leaned forward to answer it.

“Inuyasha Takahashi,” he said blandly, automatically.

“Inuyasha…” It was Kagome’s voice they heard this time, quivering slightly. “I just heard the news…I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he replied.

“You don’t have to be fine, you know,” she said gently. “I know you two never got along, but—”

“Really, I’m fine,” he interrupted, sounding a little more present, and yet somehow colder.

They could hear her sigh from the other end of the line. “Alright. When are you going to be home?”

“Not for several hours,” he answered, starting to sift through the papers on his desk again, trying to recall what he had been doing before receiving news of Sesshoumaru’s death. “I’ve got some things I need to finish up here, and then I have to go to the hospital to identify the body.”

“You’re staying at work?”

“It’s my job, Kagome—I can’t just forget about this stuff because my brother dies.”

“Inuyasha—”

“I’m fine. Just leave it alone, okay? I really need to get back to work.”

There was a pause, and then: “Alright…I’ll see you tonight when you get home…”

“See you tonight. Bye.” He placed the phone back on the hook, his hand lingering on the receiver for a moment as he took a breath—and then he turned back to his work.

“Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?” Shippo asked his charge pointedly.

Inuyasha shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the kitsune out of the corner of his eye before answering stubbornly, “No.”

Shippo rolled his eyes. “Here’s a hint—you found out that your brother was dead, and you had two choices: Go home to your wife, or bury yourself in your work. And which did you choose?”

“Feh,” Inuyasha scoffed half-heartedly. “What’s your point?”

“Sorry, big guy,” the kitsune responded regretfully, “I’ve spelled it out for you as much as I can. You’re going to have to put the pieces together for yourself at this point. Come on, we have to be getting back now.”

“You mean it’s over?” Inuyasha was surprised and annoyed by the slightly bereft feeling that this revelation elicited in him. Damn kit…

“My part is, yeah. But you still have a ways to go…”


	6. Third Person

It was dark again—but this time the darkness had substance and depth. He could feel the gentle pressure of his orthopedic pillow-top mattress beneath him, and he could feel the down pillow that was scrunched up in his arms, supporting his head. Frowning sleepily, he cracked his eyes open slightly and listened to the darkness: All he heard was the gentle hum of his apartment at rest.

He couldn’t remember returning to his bed or saying goodbye to Shippo. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less distinct his last memories became. He remembered Shippo appearing in his room, remembered their journey from one event in his life to the next, all the way up to the day of Sesshoumaru’s death—but that memory seemed to fade off at the end, and there was a gap for which he could not account between then and now. It was like he was remembering a movie he’d fallen asleep to rather than something that had actually happened to him.

Lying there in the darkness, he could almost hear Kagome’s soft breathing beside him. For a moment he thought he was hearing it, until he remembered she wasn’t there. Turning over onto his back, he rubbed a sleepy hand across his face and snorted wryly up at the invisible ceiling. He remembered his heartsick reaction to the memories of their first few years together and rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. How could he have been so gullible? He knew full well that those memories had been hand-picked to get under his skin, and yet he’d still fallen right into the trap. Hell, at this point he wasn’t even sure that what he remembered had really happened; that it hadn’t just been some kind of alcohol-induced hallucination—the rebellion of his own psyche. But regardless of what had caused his little trip down memory lane, now, in the clear light of…well, night, with his bed firm and solid beneath him and the darkness filled with the substance of reality, his world was finally settling back into place. Kagome hadn’t really left him—the very notion was ridiculous. He’d been too angry and frustrated to see it last night, but this was just another ditch in the road. It was their pattern: They fought, tension built up, things boiled over, they both stepped back, and then they made amends. And that fight they’d had the other day hadn’t even been that bad—they’d certainly been through worse. Sooner or later, Kagome would cool off and come back, and everything would go back to normal. It was probably just the stress of the holidays that had gotten to her…stupid holidays…

He glanced over at the digital clock on the nightstand. The muted blue numbers were somewhat distorted by the shape of the crystal vase—a gift to Kagome for when he’d missed their anniversary because of an overseas business meeting—that sat in front of the clock, but he was used to reading it through the occasional bout of drunkenness, so a vase was no problem. It was one fifty-nine a.m. on Christmas morning.

Closing his eyes again, he rolled back to his stomach and pressed his face more deeply into his pillow, allowing himself to drift back into a light unconsciousness.

Unfortunately, someone else had other plans.

“Up and at-em!” called an unnecessarily loud voice from the shadows, and Inuyasha yelped and lurched around just as the light flicked on, assaulting his eyes painfully. “Oops, sorry,” the wolf-youkai sneered, not sounding the least bit sincere, “did I wake you? I’ll try to be more quiet. After all, mutt-face needs his beauty sleep…”

“Who the fuck are you?” Inuyasha demanded, still blinking against the harsh light and attempting to focus on the intruder, though the dread pooling in the pit of his stomach told him he had a suspicion already. He’d never thought anyone in the world would ever be able to make him miss Shippo, but this guy was well on his way to doing just that.

“Kouga—your next spirit guide. Now get your lazy mutt’s ass out of that bed and let’s get going!”

Inuyasha groaned and fell back against his pillows. “Again with this bullshit? Why?”

“Uh-oh—we’re not suffering a relapse now are we? That’s too bad—Shippo warned me about you though. Said you were a stubborn one.”

The hanyou grumbled and tried to curl up under the comforter again. It looked like he wasn’t going to be getting _any_ sleep tonight. Maybe if he just closed his eyes and ignored him this guy would just give up and go away.

“Come on, come on, up-up-up!” the wolf cajoled, kicking the bed frame repeatedly so the whole thing shuddered, grating on Inuyasha’s nerves. “We don’t have all night, you know…”

_Dammit…_

“Fine, fine, I’m up already!” Inuyasha replied irritably, dragging himself out of the bed and coming to stand with arms crossed. “Where to this time?”

“You’ll see…”

Kouga snapped his fingers, and all at once every form of light or substance drained from the world, and they were once again in the familiar nothingness. Inuyasha heaved a sigh. _I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. Again…_ But soon the sound of distant dishes clinking, cheerful conversation, and a child’s light laughter drifted to them as though from another room—and then, much closer at hand, Inuyasha recognized Sango’s concerned voice in sharp contrast to the joyful tones coming from further off.

“Are you sure?” There was a beat of silence and an unheard reply before Sango spoke again. “But maybe it would be better if I—” she broke off, interrupted by her mute companion, and as she listened the world came into focus around them.

They were in Sango and Miroku’s kitchen. He’d seen it many times before, had enjoyed its comfortable suburban hominess as he helped clean up on several of the numerous occasions on which he and Kagome had had dinner here. The sink was piled high with breakfast dishes, and there were half-eaten loaves of bread, bottles of syrup, stacks of leftover pancakes and French toast and sausage and bacon all jumbled together on the center island, waiting to be put away. Sango was leaning against the counter by the sink with the phone to her ear and a sponge sitting forgotten in her left hand, as though she had been in the midst of doing the dishes when she had been interrupted by this troubling call.

“Alright,” she said with a commiserative sigh, “if you’re sure. But call me if you need anything, okay? I’m serious—you can call me anytime.” She gave a wan smile, apparently in response to the person on the other end of the line. “Alright—take care. Bye.”

“What’s up?” Miroku asked curiously as he entered the kitchen and crossed to the island to start putting away leftovers—but when he noticed Sango’s peeved expression, he paused, looking at her in concern. “What is it?”

She met her husband’s eyes and heaved a sigh, setting the phone down on the counter. “Kagome left Inuyasha.”

“Oh my god,” Miroku breathed. “What happened?”

She gave a wry smile. “What ever happens? They had a fight, and Kagome finally got fed up and left. If you ask me, it’s been a long time in coming.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said as he collected the leftover sausages and put them in a Tupperware container. “Sure, they have their problems, but you know them; that’s just the way they are. What was the fight about?”

Sango turned back to the sink with a shake of her head and resumed loading the plates and glasses into the dishwasher. “Nothing, really—just the usual things. I think it wasn’t so much the fight itself but the pattern of fighting that pushed her over the edge. She said she was sitting at her desk yesterday morning trying to work out in her head how to approach him about it when he got home, when it occurred to her that she spends more of her life these days fighting with him than she does _not_ fighting with him—and she didn’t like the person that he was turning her into. She didn’t like being angry all the time.”

“Did she say anything about wanting to reconcile, or is this for good?”

“She’s not sure yet—she said she needs some more time to think, and figure out if this is just a rough patch, or if this is really who they are now.”

He paused in his task, hands resting on the lid he had just fitted over a container of pancakes. “Wow.”

“I know. But you know, as much as I sympathize, I really hope she decides to make a clean break this time. He’s been taking her for granted for too long.”

“Bullshit!” Inuyasha spat before he could stop himself. Kouga raised an eyebrow at him, but Inuyasha just gave a grunt, returning his attention to the scene.

“Sango,” Miroku chastised lightly.

“Well I don’t care!” she burst out, turning back to face her husband. “She’s my best friend, and I hate to see what he’s doing to her. I know it’s sad, but sometimes it’s just best to cut your losses.”

“He’s not a bad guy, Sango—I know he hasn’t been himself lately, but it’s been a tough year, with the accident and the miscarriage and everything.”

“That may be, but it’s no excuse for him to be taking it out on her. I’m not gonna let him use her as his emotional punching bag anymore if I can help it.”

Inuyasha’s jaw muscle jumped in irritation—but he wasn’t entirely certain that it was directed at Sango. Shaking his head, he cast the thought aside.

Miroku sighed, twist-tying a loaf of bread and setting it over on the counter where it belonged. “I should probably give him a call. If I know him, he’s can’t be taking this too well—maybe I should invite him to spend the day with us again.”

“Absolutely not!” Sango snapped.

“Sango, have some compassion for the guy—his wife has just _left_ him.”

She deflated slightly and replied grudgingly, “I do. But you know what? It’s his own fault, and my sympathy for him is limited these days.”

“Come on, Sango—”

“No—I will not have that man over here ruining our Christmas. He’s probably busy drinking himself into oblivion right now, the coward, and he’s bad enough these days when he’s sober.”

Inuyasha frowned. “What does she mean by _that?_ ” he muttered.

“He’s one of our best friends,” Miroku reminded her.

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t been much of one lately.”

Her husband merely tilted his head and stared at her mildly. Finally she sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about Kagome, that’s all.”

He smiled and rounded the center island to place his hands on her shoulders and give her a comforting kiss on the forehead. “I know you are,” he murmured, pulling her gently into his arms. “So am I—but although Inuyasha certainly hasn’t been a model friend or husband lately, it’s not fair to blame him for everything that’s gone wrong. He’s had a tough life.”

“Yeah, those millionaires never get any breaks,” she said sarcastically.

“You know what I mean.”

“I suppose…”

“Just let me invite him over. I’d be very surprised if he accepted anyway—but frankly, if he did accept, I think that would be a good sign.”

“Why?”

“Because it would mean he was willing to accept our support. And that would be a step in the right direction.”

Sango sighed into his chest, saying with a smile, “I hate it when you do that.”

Her husband frowned. “When I do what?”

“That little silent ‘you’re being unreasonable and you know it’ stare.”

He grinned. “Well I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Of course. Why do you think I hate it?”

A pair of small feet timpanied against the hall floor, drawing Inuyasha’s curious eye as they came to a halt in the kitchen doorway. “Mommy-can-we-open-presents-puh- _leeeee_ -ah-zuh?” begged an impish voice, and Sango pulled back to smile at Taro, who was bouncing energetically where he stood, his face bright and bursting with the sort of excitement that only a child could manage without suffering a heart attack.

Inuyasha couldn’t quite suppress a tender smile.

“Soon, sweetie—we haven’t quite finished cleaning up from breakfast yet.”

“But _Mo_ -om—”

“Sorry, Sango, I couldn’t stop him,” said Kohaku sheepishly as he appeared in the doorway behind Taro. “This kid is a sneaky one…” He looked much older and broader in the shoulder than Inuyasha remembered from the few other occasions on which he had met Sango’s kid brother—college life seemed to be agreeing with him.

“Like his father,” Sango teased, and Miroku responded by surreptitiously squeezing her butt, earning him a light slap on the hand and a harmless glare.

“Don’t worry about it,” Miroku assured Kohaku, a smile quirking his lips, though he was soon interrupted again by his son, who now had his arms wrapped around his father’s leg and was swaying back and forth.

“Puh- _leeeze?_ ”

Miroku laughed, glancing down at his adorable little parasite, then back up at his wife. “What do you say—leave the dishes for later?”

Sango was now giving Miroku a mild stare that echoed the one he had given her earlier—but he stuck out his lower lip and made his most adorable puppy eyes. “Puh- _leeeze?_ ” he mimicked, and she laughed in spite of herself.

“No fair. Two against one…” she sighed. “Alright, let’s go open presents.”

“Yaaay!” Taro cheered, bounding out of the room and back toward the living room where a few other relatives were gathered. Looking weary, Kohaku jogged after him.

“Merry Christmas, Wifey,” Miroku grinned at her.

She grinned back. “Merry Christmas, Hubby,” she replied, and kissed him cozily.

And Inuyasha, watching the easy affection that bound their little family, felt a mild ache form deep within his chest—the kind that seemed as though it had always been there, just waiting for him to lower his guard enough to notice it. He rarely let that happen.

And there was a reason for that: He didn’t like it. He didn’t like having problems he didn’t know how to solve. Give him papers to sign, give him enemies to defeat, but of all things, never give him a quiet void in need of filling by some intangible something.

“Cute kid,” Kouga commented, sounding bored. When Inuyasha glared at him, he shrugged. “What?”

“Nothing,” Inuyasha replied.

“Great—can we go now?”

“Feh—you’re the one in charge, aren’t you?” Inuyasha scoffed.

“Damn straight. Alright then, we’re outta here.”

This time, instead of one scene melting into the next, the world around them seemed to rush away in a whirlwind, a sudden storm stripping away every remnant of the homey kitchen and settling just as quickly into the new setting.

The whole of the living room was carpeted with discarded wrapping paper and ribbons and stacks of books, games, sweaters, DVDs, and other recently acquired possessions. Children were stretched out on the floor examining their new toys, and adults sat on the couches, or stood leaning against the walls in groups, or moved from room to room chasing little ones and working on preparations for the eventual evening meal. All throughout the house were the sounds of laughter and pleasant conversation, an utterly joyful chaos.

Inuyasha had always been rather intimidated by Kagome’s gigantic extended family, although they had welcomed him freely into their midst upon his introduction. In some ways, that had just intimidated him even more. He had never known such abundant familial harmony before meeting these people. Hell, he had barely known his own father, and here Kagome knew her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and cousins-once-removed and distant relatives whose proper designations he couldn’t even begin to figure out. And every one of them was a part of her life, and had been for as long as she could remember. And somehow, miraculously, all these relations were capable of spending an entire day all in one house together without killing each other. In fact, they actually seemed to enjoy it.

Kagome’s father was a history professor at Cornell, and Kagome’s parents’ house in Ithaca had long ago been designated the “family gathering spot”—mainly because most of her family lived nearby, and because it was the house that was best designed to accommodate so many people. It was no mansion by any means, but its floor plan was wide and comfortable, and thus perfect for large gatherings. Every year at Christmas everyone from Kagome’s mother’s side of the family descended upon the house around mid-day, exchanged gifts, and spent the evening playing games and enjoying each other’s company. The meals were casual and aimed toward mass-production—things like chili or burgers on the grill—but no one ever seemed to mind the lack of ceremony.

“Dip’s ready!” Kagome announced cheerfully, holding up a wide, round platter spread with layers of various taco fixings as she passed through the living room to the dining room table, where she set the platter down beside a big bowl of corn chips. Responding to her announcement, several of Kagome’s relatives got up from their places and darted over to claim their spots around the snacks. Inuyasha licked his lips unconsciously—when it came to dip, Kagome’s mom really knew her stuff.

But almost immediately he found his gaze drawn sharply back to Kagome, who had stolen one of the vacated spots on the couch and was settling into a conversation about work with one of her cousins. She was smiling. She was _smiling_. Here she had just picked up and left him after some six years of marriage, she was putting him through absolute hell—and she was just sitting casually on the couch, chatting with her relatives as though the world hadn’t just been turned upside-down and inside-out. How could this be so easy for her? Had all that stuff she’d said in her letter been a lie, just to make him feel better, just to make it sound like she’d actually had to think about it before she ripped his heart out of his chest?

He tried to remind himself of the clear-headed conclusions he had drawn earlier about their pattern and the reasons why she would _surely_ come to her senses and come back to him _very soon_ —but he couldn’t quite drown out the question that terrified him the most: If she could leave him behind so easily, did that mean that there was already nothing left to save?

“Wow…” Kouga said appreciatively, observing Kagome’s lithe form with blatant lasciviousness.

“Hey, stop looking at her like that, you jackass!” Inuyasha barked with fists clenched threateningly—though he was inwardly somewhat relieved at the distraction. “That’s my wife!”

“Not for long she ain’t.”

“Oh yeah?” he snapped back smugly, “And whose fault is that?”

“Yours!”

Inuyasha opened his mouth to retort, but paused with a confused frown. “…Oh. Wait—no, hang on, that didn’t come out right…”

“Idiot. No wonder you lost her, mutt-face—you can’t string two sentences together without help.”

“I can so!”

“Can not!”

“Can so!”

“Can no—okay, you know what, let’s just finish this up so I can get the hell outta here, okay?”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Inuyasha grumbled.

“‘Course you couldn’t.”

“Why you—”

“Ah, ah, ah—let’s not start that again,” Kouga warned, putting up a hand.

“ _You_ started it!”

“Fine! Whatever! Just _watch_ already!”

The chime of the doorbell turned a few heads in the direction of the front hall, and a voice called out “I’ll get it!” from the general direction of the kitchen. Everyone went back to their conversations, and in the distance there were the muffled sounds of someone being greeted at the door.

Soon Mrs. Higurashi threaded her way into the room and tapped Kagome on the shoulder. “It’s for you sweetheart,” she said, nodding toward the door, and Inuyasha could have sworn he saw a hopeful expression cross her face briefly, though she concealed it with a smile as she got up to go see who was there.

Inuyasha followed her into the front hall, hardly even noticing the strangeness of having to walk through people this time—he was practically used to it by now. And frankly, he was more interested in getting a look at this mystery visitor than anything else at the moment.

When Kagome slipped past the last of the crowd and into the foyer, she stopped short. He couldn’t see her expression, but her voice registered surprise when she said, “Hojo?”

Hojo replied with a friendly smile and a sympathetic tilt of the head. “I heard what happened—I called to see how you were, and your mom suggested I come out and, ah…keep you company. Though it looks like you’re not short on that,” he added, peering down the hall to the crowded living room.

“You drove all the way out here just to keep me company?” she asked, touched.

He shrugged. “It was no trouble—my family are all in Aspen this year, but I got swamped with work at the last minute and had to bow out, so my Christmas dinner was looking like it was going to be Mac and Cheese.”

She laughed, and Inuyasha felt a sudden urge to tear something in half—like, maybe a tree, or a house or something—and then, as though to punish him for his violent impulses, she quickly crossed to Hojo and embraced him just a little too tightly. “I’m really glad you’re here—thank you,” she said, her voice thickening with emotion. Hojo returned the embrace warmly, a contented smile coming to his face.

For a few moments they simply stood there in silence, and with each moment that passed Inuyasha could feel his blood pressure rising. Finally, she pulled back and gave Hojo an inviting smile, taking him by the hand and nodding toward the living room. “Come on, I’ll introduce you around,” she said, and the pair of them passed through the incorporeal Inuyasha on their way back to the festivities.

“That bitch,” the hanyou spat, livid. “That lying, scheming, faithless, manipulative bitch!” He had never found his lack of physical substance more frustrating than he did at this moment. He wanted to shred something—anything; he wanted to grab her by the arm and drag her to face him, demand an explanation; he wanted to scream at her that she meant nothing to him, that he had known all along. “All this time she’s been swearing up and down to me that there was nothing going on, but did you see that? _Did you see that?_ You can’t tell me that meant nothing! She obviously has feelings for this bastard that she’s been hiding from me! I knew it—I knew it! And whenever I called her on it she’d turn it back on me, like I was the one who had something to hide, when it was really her!”

“Are you done now?” Kouga said, yawning, dodging lazily when Inuyasha took a swing at him. “Good,” he continued, interpreting the strike as a “yes.” “Now that you’ve gotten all the crazy out of your system, let’s try the reasonable approach.”

“Oh yeah? Well this oughta be good,” Inuyasha snapped bitterly. “Go on— _you_ tell me what we just saw here.”

“We saw Kagome—a woman who has been putting up with your horrible temper and stupidity for over six years, and who has finally decided to accept the fact that you’re a useless sack of shit that’s not worth her time—seeking comfort in the arms of a friend.”

“And?”

“No ‘and’—that’s it.”

“Bullshit.”

“‘Fraid not, mutt-face. No matter what you say, you’ve been waiting on pins and needles for the day when Kagome kicks the shit out of you and falls for some other guy, and because you were so sure it was going to happen sooner or later, you practically drove her into this guy’s arms. Look at him—the guy is everything you’re not, and if there is anything between him and Kagome—now or ever—then you can be damn sure that you were the one who put it there.”

“Fuck you! You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

“Oh, but I do.”

“Oh yeah? Well then how do you explain the fact that she doesn’t even seem to care about what she’s done?”

Kouga heaved a long-suffering sigh. “It’s a wonder you have any room at all to think in that thick head of yours. Come with me.”

He turned and rounded the corner, but instead of heading back toward the living room, he trotted up the stairs to the upper level of the house. Up here in the carpeted hallway, a hush fell over the world, and the ambient sound from downstairs was muted and distant. Kouga led Inuyasha down the hall to Kagome’s childhood bedroom—the room they always slept in when they came to visit—and he motioned with a sweep of his hand for Inuyasha to enter the room.

Stepping through the closed door, Inuyasha found Kagome sitting alone on the edge of the neatly-made double bed, facing away from him. It was a moment before he noticed that her shoulders were shaking, and another moment before he heard her draw in a ragged breath. His eyebrows drew together in concern, and he stepped toward her apprehensively, inch by inch. As he drew level with her and knelt down at her side, he saw that her eyes were red, and silent tears were streaming down her cheeks. She drew inward, wrapping her arms around her waist and rocking back and forth as silent sobs racked her form again, doubling her over as though each one was being carved from the flesh of her abdomen. She swiped futilely at the tears with the back of her hand and turned her gaze to the ceiling, taking another uneven breath before sinking into her tears again.

“Kagome…” he whispered, reaching out to touch her face, surprising himself slightly when his hand passed through her, having no effect. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to tell her everything was alright. At that moment, he felt he would to anything to make her stop crying, to wipe the tears from her face. But intention was not enough—if he wanted to change anything, he had to be able to reach her. It wasn’t enough for only part of him to be there with her—she needed all of him.


	7. One Lonely Rose

He blinked awake, finding himself in darkness once again, staring up at the ceiling—but this time his memories didn’t slip away so easily. Especially the sound of Kagome’s tears.

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. If Sesshoumaru was to be believed—and at this point, Inuyasha could hardly claim not to be a believer—there was still one more spirit due to appear: The one who would show him the future. He couldn’t exactly say he was looking forward to it—in fact, when he thought about it too much, it scared the shit out of him—but whenever he tried to shrug it off and go back to sleep, the image of Kagome’s unchecked sobs played across the insides of his eyelids like a movie, and he found himself staring at the ceiling again. As much as he really didn’t want to go through with this, somewhere deep down he knew he needed to. It was his only hope.

“Inuyasha,” came a somewhat stern and well-worn voice from the shadows, and Inuyasha frowned in its direction.

“Who’s there?”

“My name is Kaede. I’m—”

“The third spirit,” he finished for her, sitting up and putting his feet on the floor obediently.

The old crone raised two curious eyebrows at his docile response. “From what I’ve heard about you, I expected to have a lot more trouble getting you out of bed.”

He shrugged, trying to look and sound unconcerned. “Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Besides, I figure the quicker we start, the quicker it’s over.”

“Very wise,” she replied, just a bit too knowingly for his liking.

“So, where to?” he asked.

She had already turned and begun to walk into the shadows. “Follow me,” she beckoned.

A rather cramped but homey living room materialized around them. There was a little fireplace on one wall with a couch and an armchair set around it, and a TV that was a couple of years out of date was sitting in the corner. The table was scuffed, though it didn’t quite qualify as an antique, and the couch was a bit threadbare, in need of reupholstering sometime soon. A pinkish-orange glow suffused the air from the sunset that filtered in through the window shades.

“Where are we? I don’t recognize this place?”

“You wouldn’t,” Kaede replied. “You’ve never been here before.”

“Well then, what are we doing here?”

“This is the house of the Miller family. They live at 146 Bunson Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. Mrs. Miller is a housewife—she takes care of the home and the Millers’ four children, and she also cleans houses three or four times a week to pick up a little extra money to contribute to Nick’s—their oldest—college fund. He graduates this year, and he’s already been accepted to Princeton with a good deal of financial aid, but if the family can’t scrape together enough money to pay the rest, he’s going to have to defer and start working full-time until he’s earned his way.”

“Well that sucks, but I still don’t get why we’re here.”

“Patience, Inuyasha. I’m coming to that.”

A door opened and closed somewhere just out of sight, and within moments a balding, browbeaten man appeared around the corner, setting down his coat and briefcase beside the battered old piano and slumping into the nearest armchair, his head in his hands.

“Who’s that?” Inuyasha asked.

“That’s Bill Miller, husband, father, and former bookkeeper in the accounting division of Amatext Incorporated.”

Inuyasha glanced quickly at Kaede, then back to the man sitting before them. “‘Former’? What did he do?”

“He didn’t ‘do’ anything, Inuyasha, except work 40 hours or more a week in a thankless, dead-end job for nearly twenty years.”

“Well if he didn’t do anything, then why did he get fired?”

Kaede gave him a wry look. “You of all people ought to be able to figure that out by now. That’s what happens when corporations are bought and then dismantled and sold for parts—people get laid off, families get lost in the shuffle.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and grumbled, “Then why do I get the feeling you’re trying to pin the blame for this on me?”

She smiled shrewdly at him, choosing her words. “Tell me, Inuyasha, what were your reasons for deciding to purchase and dismantle Amatext Incorporated?”

He was slightly caught off guard by the question, but he shrugged and answered, “They were in the process of going under, and Miroku said he thought it was the right time to do it. Can I assume from all this that the deal goes through and we buy the corporation?”

Kaede nodded. “But Miroku wasn’t the one who recommended dismantling the company and selling off the pieces, was he?”

“No—actually, he wanted to just absorb the whole thing into our organization with only a little minor restructuring. He said their foundations were still solid—their problems were mainly on an executive level.”

“Then why didn’t you do as he suggested? He is the head of your financial division, isn’t he? Why not take his advice?”

Inuyasha shrugged again, still not sure where this was going. “I didn’t want to take the risk. Is there a point to all this?”

She was still giving him one of those “superior” looks he hated so much—one of those looks that said, “I know something you don’t know”—but she didn’t seem willing to divulge her secrets just yet. “I just find it interesting that you would choose to ignore the advice of the man who is clearly best acquainted with your company’s finances. Is it possible you had an ulterior motive for making the decision you did?”

Inuyasha slanted her a wary look—now he had a sneaking suspicion of where this was going. And he wasn’t too crazy about it. “Anything’s possible,” he grumbled noncommittally. And then, venturing to change the subject, he nodded toward the man in the armchair. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“He’ll survive. His wife, Marie, will take on a few more cleaning jobs to help get them through this rough patch, and he’ll help out with the kids while he’s looking for work. Nick will defer his admission to Princeton and take a second job doing construction for a year to save up the tuition—though he’ll have to transfer after a year, when the money runs out again. Bill will get another job with another company for only a little less than he was paid at Amatext. Leaning on the love they all share with one another for support, the Millers will get back on their feet again.

“But what about Harvey Grier,” she continued, “who worked in one of Amatext’s printing plants, who fell off the wagon when he lost his job, lost his wife when he fell off the wagon, and lost his apartment when she kicked him out of it? He robs a convenience store and ends up spending most of his days sitting on an old crate at the corner of Broadway and Eighth street, begging for spare change. Some of these stories have happy endings—but others don’t.”

“Oh come on—you can’t go putting all that on my shoulders,” Inuyasha scoffed angrily. “I may not be any kind of saint, but you can’t blame me for screwing up the lives of all the people who just happen to fall through the cracks in these big deals. Sure, it sucks, but that’s business—that’s _life_. I can’t be personally responsible for every one of them.”

“No, that’s true, you can’t,” Kaede conceded. “But there’s a difference between conducting normal business and using your business to satisfy personal needs. The moment that a deal becomes more about your own personal vendettas than about what’s best for all considered, you become responsible for each and every life you destroy in your wake.”

Inuyasha met her stern gaze unflinchingly, but he could think of no sufficient reply, so he eventually turned away.

“Come—we have to be moving on.”

Relieved that at least they were leaving this conversation behind them, Inuyasha followed her—but when he took in the scene they had now entered and deduced, much to his dismay, what must be going on, he wished he could go back and mope with Mr. Miller.

The room was clean, crisp, and professional—not unlike many of the conference rooms that were sprinkled among the offices at Tetcom headquarters. The only very slightly older Inuyasha and Kagome sat across from one another at the end of a long table made of highly-polished burgundy wood. Next to Kagome was a woman in a sharp black pantsuit, her dark red hair neatly parted just a little to the left and tucked efficiently behind her ears. Next to Inuyasha was a man in an equally black suit, his salt-and pepper hair also neatly parted, just a little to the left. Between them on the table was a document made out in triplicate, all attention focused upon it somberly as though it were the guest of honor at a funeral.

“Well then,” said the red-haired woman, her hands folded neatly before her on the table, “if there are no further problems, all that remains is for you both to sign the agreement.”

The older Inuyasha glanced up from the table, but he wasn’t looking at the woman who had spoken—he was looking at Kagome. He watched as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes never leaving the paper. Finally, she reached forward and took the fresh, black pen that sat beside the settlement, pulling the forms toward her and only hesitating a moment before scrawling her signature at the bottom of the page, and then again several more times in the required places. And then, without meeting his eyes, she slid the papers across the table to Inuyasha, who paused a bit longer before doing the same.

He slid the completed document back into the center of the table and set the pen down beside it. There it was: The End. Somehow it was much quieter than it seemed it ought to be.

The black-suited man reached out and gathered the documents, passing one copy each to Inuyasha and Kagome, and rapping the edge of the last one sharply against the table to straighten up the edges as he got to his feet. “Congratulations Mr. Takahashi, Ms. Takahashi—you are officially divorced.” He offered a hand to Inuyasha, who shook it absently. The red-haired woman shook hands with Kagome as well, and the two strangers exited the room with quiet efficiency, the door clicking shut behind them and leaving the pair in heavy silence.

Inuyasha stared at the door handle, a blank expression on his face. Finally, for the first time during the entire meeting, Kagome looked up at him. When he felt her eyes on his face, he met her gaze.

She gave him a small, slightly strained smile—a vain attempt to seem at ease—but he couldn’t return it. Another moment passed in which someone could have said something—but no one did.

She slid back her chair and got to her feet, still trying too hard to seem “fine” and act as though a major chapter in both of their lives hadn’t just ended in a shambles. “I should really get going,” she said, though she didn’t actually move toward the door, standing there fiddling with her purse instead, as though she was waiting for his permission to leave. He nodded, but said nothing, and she hesitated a moment longer, teetering on the edge of saying something a bit more substantial—but then she decided against it, turning toward the door instead.

Still, as she gripped the handle, something stopped her. Sighing, she turned and leaned back against the door with a wry smile. “I was lying awake all last night thinking about us, wondering how we got here. My parents have been happily married for thirty-five years—I guess I just always assumed that when I got married, it would be for good.” She glanced down at the expired wedding ring she still wore on her left hand—apparently she hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to take it off. “I was trying to figure out what could have gone so wrong—why we fought so hard against each other, why I left that day, why I stayed away. And then I realized something: I left because…I wanted to see if you would come after me. Not because you had to, or because you thought it was what I wanted, but because it was what you wanted. I needed to know that you needed me the way I needed you. But you didn’t.” She paused, smiling morosely as she ran a finger delicately along the edge of her copy of the divorce settlement they had just signed. “At least I got my answer.”

Finally, she slipped the ring gingerly off her finger and stepped back over to the table, setting it down next to his hand. Glancing up at him, she murmured, “Goodbye, Inuyasha,” and turned to reach for the door that led out into the hallway.

He closed his fist around the now empty ring, and just as she was turning the handle—“Wait.” She turned back, a curious expression on her face. He closed his eyes briefly, collecting himself before he spoke. “What if we give it another try?”

She tilted her head with a wry, weary smile. “Inuyasha, we just fin—”

He stood up, interrupting her. “No, wait—don’t say no yet. I know my timing isn’t great, but—I mean, maybe we’re making a huge mistake giving up so fast. All the things you just said—they’re still here somewhere, aren’t they? What if we just…just start over?”

Heaving a sigh, she met his eyes, a note of sympathy coming into her expression as she observed sheer desperation hiding there. “You know, if you had said all that to me a year ago…I probably would have said yes. Who knows now if I would have been right or wrong to do so, or how long things would have lasted if I had—but it doesn’t really matter now. Sometimes…it’s just too late.”

He stared after her until long after the door had closed in her wake—and then he sank down into his chair at the end of the conference table, dropping his head into his hands and gazing unseeingly at the paper that was all that was left of his second failed marriage: the love of his life, reduced to an inert mass of legal jargon all set down in black and white.

The incorporeal Inuyasha, having observed all this in silence, suddenly turned to Kaede, a new determination in his expression. For the first time in this whole insane experience, he finally felt like he was a step ahead. “That’s it, isn’t it—what she just said. It’s the key to all this, isn’t it.”

“Inuyasha—” Kaede began, but he interrupted her.

“No, no, no, don’t you go trying to confuse me with all that mumbo-jumbo—you guys have been screwing with me all night, but it’s all finally starting to make sense: I have to go after her. That’s what this whole thing has been about—to convince me to go after her and bring her home.”

She shook her head pityingly, sighing, “Inuyasha, even you should know by now that it’s not that simple. And I can see that there are still a couple of things you don’t quite understand yet.”

“What?” Inuyasha demanded, more frustrated than ever. “What don’t I understand? Why can’t you people just _explain_ it to me instead of dragging me back and forth through time and throwing all these cryptic questions at me?”

But Kaede merely shrugged. “If we are successful, you will understand that very soon.”

“And if not?”

“Only you can determine what will happen in either case. We are not here to live your life for you—we can only guide you on the path to self-awareness.”

“Unbelievable,” Inuyasha grumbled to himself—but Kaede had already turned and begun to walk away, so he had no choice but to follow her.

He blinked against the blinding afternoon sun, shielding his face with his hand until his eyes began to adjust. When they did, the sight before him took his breath away.

She was every bit as beautiful as she had been the day he had first met her. In most cases, that would be an exaggeration, but the harder he tried to find even the tiniest sign of aging anywhere on her body, the more convinced he became that it was true. If anything, she was even more beautiful than she had been when he’d known her. Her skin was tanned, smooth, and perfectly tailored to her lithe frame, seeming to glow in the sunlight that reflected off the surface of the pool. She was stretched out luxuriously on a plush lawn chair in a sheer black dress with a deep v-neck and a slit up the side that ran all the way from her ankle to her upper thigh. On her feet were black spike-heeled sandals studded with diamonds that matched the ones at her left wrist and throat. They were the sort of shoes that Kagome always called “chicken shoes”: Which would break first—the heels, or her ankles?

They heard footsteps on the stone terrace behind them, approaching from the direction of the house at the other end of the swimming pool. Inuyasha turned, curious: It was Naraku, of course. Unlike Kikyo, he did show his age—but it was a very graceful age, highlighting his long, dark hair with gray and simply making him look more distinguished, more the self-made billionaire that he clearly had remained, despite the loss of his company.

“Kikyo,” he said as he approached, and she glanced over her shoulder in his direction.

“What is it, Darling?” She removed her sunglasses gracefully as he took a seat on the edge of her chair. Her stunning features registered only slight annoyance at the interruption.

“I can’t find my gray suit.”

“Maria must have taken it to the cleaners. Why do you need it?”

“We’re having dinner at the Bancrofts’ tonight.”

She frowned, slightly. “Since when?”

“Since they invited us a week ago.”

“Well you might have told me,” she replied testily. “I have plans.”

“What sort of plans?”

“I was going to do my yoga and then paint for awhile.”

“Well, you can do that tomorrow night.”

“I suppose.”

“What are you doing out here, anyway?”

“Meditating.”

He chuckled. “Don’t you have to sit cross-legged or something to meditate?”

“You only have to be comfortable—and this is how I’m comfortable,” she answered with a coy shrug.

“Three-inch heels and an evening gown is how you’re comfortable?”

She walked two fingers up his shoulder and tapped him on the nose, saying, “Why do you think I married you? And this isn’t an evening gown—it’s a sun-wrap.”

“Of course—how silly of me,” he replied with a smile. And then he bent forward slowly and gave her a gentle, lingering kiss. She smiled into his embrace and kissed him in return, toying with his graying ponytail with her bejeweled left hand.

As Naraku had leaned in, his intentions clear, Inuyasha had braced himself for the wave of jealousy and bitterness that threatened to engulf him whenever he was confronted with news of Kikyo and the reminder of what she had done to him. He’d always managed to keep it at bay in the past—but this was too much. Surely he wouldn’t be able to guard against it this time. So he steeled his nerves against the impact, until finally their lips touched—

And nothing happened.

They were kissing—and he felt nothing. No raging jealousy, no anger, no seething desire to close the distance and tear Naraku to shreds, not even bitterness toward Kikyo for everything she’d put him through. Just…nothing. It was as though they were complete strangers; as though he were watching a movie. And he found himself wondering just what he had been defending against.

“I don’t get it…” he murmured, dumbstruck.

“Something the matter?” Kaede questioned innocently.

“Yeah—I mean…no,” he replied distractedly, half to himself. “I mean…shouldn’t there be? Shouldn’t I…?” He trailed off and stared at them again, until finally he felt a tugging at his arm.

“We still have more to see,” Kaede nudged. “Come along…”

He turned reluctantly away from the scene, still trying to figure out why it didn’t bother him, and barely noticed when the ground rippled underneath him, and he was suddenly somewhere else.

The leaves rustled in a cool spring breeze, and the sun shone brightly on the green grass that surrounded the large white awning shielding a sea of circular tables from the glare. Inuyasha stepped into the shade of the awning and scanned the area underneath: To his right the space was filled with tables, people scattered in chairs here and there, and a few half-eaten pieces of cake indicated the end of a meal. To his left, people in summer formalwear were crowded on the dance floor, laughing and chatting and swaying back and forth to the sound of a band playing Irving Berlin’s, “How Deep is the Ocean.” He recognized a face here and there, though he couldn’t place any of them.

“What am I looking for?” he asked Kaede. “Give me a hint, at least.”

Kaede smiled at him and jerked her chin, directing his gaze to a couple standing at the edge of the dance floor on the far side of the tent: It was Miroku and Sango.

He moved swiftly through the crowd, not bothering to dodge anyone or anything, until he was within earshot of their conversation.

“—can’t really have expected him to come,” Sango was saying to Miroku wryly.

“Well, no,” he conceded. “I guess not. But it would have been nice if he could have made the gesture—not just for her sake, but for his own.”

“I keep telling you, he’s a lost cause. He’s always been a jackass, but he’s only gotten worse, especially in the last few years.” Miroku opened his mouth to speak, but she continued before he had the chance, “And don’t tell me it’s been a tough time for him, because it’s been a tough time for her too, and she’s dealt with it just fine.”

“You can’t compare the two.”

“Oh yes I can, and I’m going to—so there. Does he know yet?”

“That I’m leaving? No, not yet. To tell you the truth, I really wish I could wait until we get to San Francisco and send him an email—these days, it’s best to deliver bad news to him from a distance.”

“Coward,” she teased.

“I freely admit it,” he replied. “You wanna turn in my resignation for me?”

“No way—after this, I don’t ever want to be in the same room with that guy again. I mean, really, this is the last straw. At least she made an overture—she invited him, didn’t she? But did he have the balls to show up? No. Well, I say the hell with him.”

“You know, you really shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

“What?” she said, confused. “He’s not dead.”

“He might as well be,” Miroku replied ruefully. Sango gave a wry laugh and held out a hand to her husband. Taking the silent cue, Miroku finished off the last of his scotch, set the glass on a nearby table, and took her hand, leading the way onto the dance floor to sway to the music along with the other couples.

Inuyasha watched them go, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “They were talking about me, weren’t they,” he said to Kaede, though it wasn’t really a question. Kaede remained silent—there was no need to answer. “Then this is…”

As if on cue, the crowd on the dance floor shifted slightly, affording him a nearly unobstructed view of the couple in the center of the floor. Kagome wore a long, white satin, sleeveless gown, her skirt swinging gently like a bell as she moved to the music. It was a different dress than the one she had worn at their wedding—and her hair was up this time, instead of down. He preferred it down, resting gently on her ivory shoulders and framing her heart-shaped face.

_“And if I ever lost you, how much would I cry?”_ the singer crooned, as Inuyasha remained transfixed on Kagome’s smiling face.

_“How deep is the ocean…?_

_“How high is the sky…?”_

When the music ended, he watched her lift her chin to kiss the man in her arms, and only then did Inuyasha realize that she was dancing with Hojo. She had _married_ Hojo. And standing there, watching her find happiness in another man’s embrace, Inuyasha knew without a doubt that he had never felt more alone in his entire life.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder—but when he turned, there was no one there. No tables, no chairs, no guests—no one.

Fallen leaves rustled across the cool, damp grass at his feet, and he glanced up at an eerily familiar scene. It was particularly disturbing because it had not yet occurred, and yet he felt as though he had been here before—in fact, he felt as though he had never left.

He saw himself dressed in a long black overcoat, a black fedora shielding his eyes from the icy gray sky. There was rain in the air, though none fell, and the trees that dotted the hillside here and there had lost all but one or two of their leaves. His older self stood before one of the many headstones that populated the area, completely still except for the edge of his coat, which wafted slightly in the breeze. He hesitated, afraid to approach the scene for reasons he couldn’t quite name, but soon he stepped forward, his need for more information overpowering his fear.

When he was only a few feet away, he began to see the lines on his own face, a few around the eyes mainly, seeming to silently count the years that had passed since he had last seen Miroku and Sango, last seen Kagome, last seen Sesshoumaru, last seen his father, last seen his mother. The older Inuyasha extended an arm and placed a single red rose on top of the headstone, letting his eyes linger silently over his mother’s name for a few more moments before bowing his head and turning to walk silently back down the hill, where he disappeared into the mist.

Inuyasha watched himself leave, and then looked back at the lonely rose still resting on the tombstone.

“Have you seen enough?”

The voice was most definitely not Kaede’s.

Inuyasha whirled around to see Sesshoumaru approaching him as if from nowhere, looking exactly as he had when he had appeared in Inuyasha’s apartment on that dark and drunken Christmas Eve, what now seemed like years before. “Where’s Kaede?” he asked reflexively.

“Her work is done.”

Inuyasha waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. Finally, he couldn’t bear the silence any longer. “Dammit, what are you doing here? Will you just, for once in your life, give me a straight answer, please?”

Sesshoumaru replied with a stony silence, only feeding Inuyasha’s frustration.

“Well you’re here, aren’t you? You must have a reason. Isn’t this the part where you’re supposed to give me the magical solution that will fix everything and make everybody live happily ever after?”

“You’ve seen what the spirits have shown you,” the specter said gravely, as last, “You’ve seen where this road leads. The only person who has the power to alter this fate is you.”

“So what are you saying—if I don’t ‘change my ways’ I’ll go to Hell? Lot of good that does me,” Inuyasha scoffed, but Sesshoumaru didn’t bat an eyelid.

“There’s no such thing as Hell, Inuyasha. Hell is just a bedtime story that humans have invented to create some sense of justice in an unjust world, and to keep one another in line. There is no torment waiting for you in death except the eternal regret of all the things you failed to appreciate while you were alive. We each make our own Hell, little brother, right here on earth, through the choices we make.” And with that, he turned away, walking back into the mist and disappearing a bit more with each step.

“That’s it?” Inuyasha demanded, chasing after him—but he was moving away too quickly. “That’s all the help you’re going to give me?”

“You already have everything you need,” Sesshoumaru replied, just before fading into the mist completely. Inuyasha slowed to a halt—he was completely alone now, and the mist seemed to be getting thicker and thicker. He whipped around, but he could no longer see his mother’s tombstone or any of the other headstones he’d passed on the way. Everything was white, and seemed to be getting whiter and whiter and whiter…

And then, somewhere far away, as though drifting on the wind from a distant town, he heard the gentle toll of a bell.


	8. Peanut Blossoms and Pistachio Ice Cream

_Beep_ — _Beep_ — _Beep_ —

Inuyasha groped sleepily for his alarm clock, hitting the snooze button and releasing a grateful sigh as the aggravating noise ceased.

He was just beginning to drift off again, sliding back into the sluggish waves of his alcohol-soaked sleep, when a realization appeared at the edge of his consciousness, and his eyes snapped open. Frowning at the neon-blue digits as they flipped from 7:47 to 7:48, he tried to figure out what it was that had struck him as odd. His eyes slid over the pale wood of the nightstand, up the silver spiral base of the table lamp, across the white wall reflecting the cool morning sunlight that shone indirectly through the sheer curtains covering the window—

That was it—morning. It was morning. All at once, the strange and surreal events of the previous night came rushing back to him, and he sat up in bed, tossing aside his plush down comforter and putting his feet on the floor. A sudden twinge in the general vicinity of his skull stopped him from getting all the way to his feet, and he scrunched his face against the pain, resting his forehead in his hands for a moment.

Had it really happened? He couldn’t be sure. He _had_ had a lot to drink the night before—and the more he recalled about the details, the more unbelievable it all seemed. A visit from his dead brother? Traveling through time and space? Seeing the future? If he were to repeat any of it to anybody, he’d probably be committed on the spot. And what’s more, he had fallen asleep to a showing of _A Christmas Carol_ —and it wasn’t uncommon for one’s dreams to take on elements of the events of one’s day. Sure—he’d been watching _A Christmas Carol_ , he’d been worrying about the Amatext deal, he’d been upset over the fact that Kagome had left, and he’d been drinking like a sailor—it would have been surprising if he _hadn’t_ had a weird dream or two.

And yet…

Well, it didn’t really matter, did it? What mattered was that, real or imagined, he couldn’t get the image of that one, lonely rose resting on his mother’s tombstone out of his head. What mattered was that Kagome was gone, and if he didn’t do something about it, she wasn’t going to come back. What _mattered_ was that he had made a lot of mistakes over the course of a lot of years—and starting today he had a chance to correct them, one by one. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

He pushed himself to his feet, adrenaline and an invigorating sense of purpose and determination flooding through his veins as he hit the button to turn on his laptop, grabbed a towel from the linen closet, and hopped into the shower. After a few minutes of quick scrubbing and shampooing, washing off the stench of alcohol and the grime of a very long day, he got out and dried off, wrapping a towel around his waist and heading back to the computer. He opened the Tetcom browser and logged onto his account, slipping on some boxers and grabbing a pair of dark blue jeans and a white t-shirt from the closet while the program loaded. Pulling on the blue jeans with one hand, he clicked on the “write email” icon with the other, and typed in the subject line, “Important.” That was as far as he got before he lost his balance and fell over, earning himself a rug burn to the knee for his trouble—but he merely grunted and finished putting on his jeans from a sitting position before standing up and snatching the t-shirt off the bed. Sitting at his desk properly, he slipped the t-shirt over his head and began to type hurriedly:

_I’ve been thinkig about the Amatext deal some more—maybe it’s not such a good idea to dismantl it after all. I want to look into other options. Put the deal on hold, reevaluate the financials, and have your proposal ready for teh board meeting next Tuesday—I’m cancling the one on Friday. I’m going out of town, and with any luck I wont be back for a few days, so everybody can have the rest of the week off—pass it along._

_Inuyasha_

Forgoing spell-check in his haste, he located Miroku’s email address in his contact list, clicked “send,” and got up without even bothering to close the confirmation window. Grabbing his wallet and keys from the nightstand, he slipped them in his pockets, pulled on a dark green sweater from the closet, and paused, facing his reflection in the full-length mirror by the bedroom door. He looked alright—a little sloppy, but presentable. He usually wasn’t the type to be concerned about his appearance, but he needed every advantage he could get if he was going to make this work. And he had to make this work.

Satisfied, he headed for the door, snatching his black cloth overcoat off the hook as he left the apartment. The elevator seemed to take an eternity to arrive, but when it finally did he pressed the button for the parking garage six times, as though it would somehow encourage the elevator to move faster. It didn’t. As they inched downward, the poor, impeccably-dressed older woman who had the misfortune of sharing the small space with him shrank into the corner and eyed him nervously as he paced back and forth like a caged tiger. When they reached the lobby, she slipped out past him gratefully, though he’d barely noticed she was there in the first place. Finally the elevator reached his parking level, and he stepped out the moment the doors opened, making a beeline for his Mercedes.

He was driving a bit too fast for a parking garage, but he didn’t care. And anyway, it was Christmas morning—who would be out driving around right now? Besides idiots like him, of course. When he reached street level, he barely slowed down to swipe his access card and allow the gate to open before tearing out into the city streets and winding his way downtown to the Holland Tunnel and out of Manhattan. Soon he was out on the open highway, headed northeast on 280 with the radio blaring. _“It’s that time of year, when the world falls in love…”_ crooned Frank Sinatra, and what would normally have made Inuyasha roll his eyes and change the station instead made him smile and start to sing along. Of course, he got most of the words wrong, and the key wasn’t even close, but he didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he did everything completely wrong, as long as he at least tried. The only true mistake was to be so afraid of doing something wrong that he did nothing at all. He was done doing nothing.

Around the time Inuyasha hit East Orange, New Jersey, somewhere in a comfortable and crowded house in the suburbs of New York, his financial advisor kissed his wife and stepped out of the kitchen, telling her he’d only be a minute, he just wanted to check email, and they should go on in and start passing out presents. He sat down at his desk and woke up his computer, maximizing the browser and finding one new email in his inbox—one from his boss, marked “Important.” Opening it up, he perused the brief, hastily written paragraph, a smile coming to his face. He called out to his wife, and she appeared in the doorway behind him, sounding curious. _Take a look at this_ , he said. She did so—and her smile matched her husband’s by the time she’d finished. They exchanged a knowing look, and then she patted him on the shoulder. _Come on, Taro’s waiting_. They left the study together, rejoining their family in the living room.

*      *      *

He pulled to a stop in front of the sloping, snow-covered lawn that spread out from the doorstep of Kagome’s parents house. It was a comfortable old house, built of dark, sturdy brick, with a roofed front porch that stretched the width of the façade. The inside, he knew, had been renovated more than once over the generations, so that the house was now a mix of the quaintly old and the efficiently new. Although it was nowhere near as physically imposing as the house in which he had grown up—just as Kagome’s parents were nowhere near as remote as his father had been—he had always been somewhat intimidated by this house. Kagome was very close to her parents—their opinion mattered to her a great deal, and despite their welcoming him into their family, he’d always harbored a deep-seated fear that sooner or later they would realize he didn’t deserve her. Now that he had seen that very fact proven to him in vivid detail, never before had he been more intimidated by the sight of this house than he was now.

His blinding determination had gradually ebbed away the closer he’d gotten to his destination, leaving him with a paralyzing fear. For several minutes he sat there in front of the house, the car still running, trying to convince himself to just suck it up and do it. All the good intentions in the world wouldn’t save him if he couldn’t start backing them up with actions—and if he couldn’t, then everything he had been through, everything he had learned, would be for nothing. Finally, he took a deep breath, gathered his resolve, and turned off the engine.

As he marched up the slippery driveway, he turned his collar up against the chill wind and stuffed his hands into his pockets, wishing he’d thought to bring a scarf. Entering the relative sanctuary of the porch, he reached out to press the doorbell, hesitating briefly as his doubts resurfaced, but then silencing them with the muted chimes from within. He listened intently, his heartbeat quickening when he heard footsteps approaching.

The door opened to reveal Kagome’s mother, her expression running the gamut from curiosity to surprise to understanding and cool expectancy in a matter of moments.

“I know she probably doesn’t want to see me, and I’m sorry for just showing up like this, but…” he faltered, wishing he could see some hint in her face of which way she was leaning—but no luck. He couldn’t read a thing. “I really need to see her,” he finished.

She observed him in silence a moment, and he felt himself losing ground, so he rushed to add, “Please—I swear I’ll go if she wants me to. I just need to talk to her for a few minutes.”

Heaving a sigh, she stepped aside and nodded her head toward the interior of the house. “She’s in the living room,” she offered.

“Thank you,” Inuyasha exhaled gratefully, rushing past her—and he wasn’t sure, but he thought she gave him what might almost pass for a smile as he did so.

But there was no time to worry about Kagome’s mother at the moment—he had bigger obstacles to overcome.

He stepped into the crowded living room, which was scattered with people, stacks of newly opened presents, and discarded wrapping paper. He opened his mouth to say Kagome’s name, but couldn’t seem to find his voice—so he just stood there, speechless, as one by one the occupants of the room noticed his presence and cut off their conversations. Kagome, sitting on the carpet in her pajamas and open bathrobe near the fireplace on the opposite side of the room, was the last to look up.

“Hi,” he said lamely as she quickly got to her feet, gaping at him.

Her eyes darted around, scanning all the upturned faces that were taking in the scene with interest. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“I know you said you needed time to think, but I had to see you,” he replied. “Is there someplace we could go and talk?”

Her spine straightened and she lifted her chin slightly, almost defiantly. “I don’t think so.”

He gave a wry laugh, and met her gaze steadily. “Fine,” he agreed, his determination only growing, “then I’ll say what I have to say right here.”

She raised her eyebrows, thrown off guard. Clearly she had expected him to argue—now she didn’t know quite what to do. “Okay…”

Now it was his turn to cast his eyes over the faces of Kagome’s relatives, some of whom he had only met a handful of times. But he’d come this far already—if he was going to do this, he was going to do it all the way. “Something happened to me last night, after you left. I don’t know if it was real, or if it was just the alcohol talking—” He laughed wryly. “If I told you about it you’d never believe me, but…whatever it was, it was real enough. I saw what my life was like before I met you; I saw what my life has been like with you, and how I’ve managed to screw it up every step of the way; and I saw what my life would be like without you—and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and crossed her arms over her chest, her expression still impassive—but he could see her struggling to hold it there, and he felt hope rising in his chest. Maybe he had a shot—maybe he really could make this work.

“I know I’ve been a complete idiot most of the time, and I can’t promise that I’ll never be an idiot again—I tried that, and it never worked. But I can promise you that I know now what I’ve been doing wrong and why, and if I can prevent it, I will never let you get hurt again—even if it means protecting you from myself.”

A hint of a smile pulled at her lips at that—but there were tears in her eyes. And he wasn’t sure they were the good kind of tears. She took a deep breath, swiping at her eyes and looking down at her hands as she considered her response.

He swallowed, his jaw tight as he waited, torn between the need to urge her along and the fear of saying the wrong thing. “Well,” he said quietly, “what do you think?”

She looked up and gave him a sad smile. “I’m not sure. I mean,” she added, quickly, “I know you believe what you’re saying, but…I’ve heard this song before. I just don’t know if I can believe that anything is really going to change.”

The silence that followed was a heavy one. Inuyasha could feel everyone’s eyes on the pair of them, waiting to see what he would do. What could he do? Everything he’d done so far—everything he’d ever done to apologize to her—it wasn’t going to work. He had to prove to her that he had changed. He had to do something she couldn’t possibly expect.

Her shoulders fell slightly—he could feel the “no” on the horizon. He was running out of time.

“Pistachio ice cream,” he blurted out.

“What?” she replied, puzzled, half worried he was having some sort of stroke.

“That’s what you had—the night we saw that play in the village, and then we went to the square and I told you about Kikyo.”

She frowned, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

“And the day I met you—I was reading Harry Potter at Starbucks, and you came up to me, and I acted like I hadn’t noticed you, but I had.”

“You had?”

“Why do you think I was there so often?” He gave a small smile. “And then I took you to see _Blazing Saddles_ at that old rerun theatre on twelfth street. You put your head on my shoulder, and I got freaked out, so I went to get popcorn. And when I came back, I wanted you to lean on me again, so I kept nudging the popcorn away from you so you’d have to reach for it.”

She laughed.

“And the day I asked you to marry me…I almost didn’t. I was standing in that line, and the ring was burning a hole in my pocket, and I was thinking ‘what the hell am I doing? This is ridiculous’—and I was just gonna order a mocha, say hi, and get the hell out of there. But then I got to the counter and I saw you, and I knew that if I wasn’t going to suck it up and go through with it, I might as well just keep walking and jump right into the ocean, because if I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with you, there’d be no point in spending it with anybody. Right then, in that moment, I would have agreed to live under the counter of that Starbucks if it meant I’d be with you.

“And then, somehow, I forgot all that. It got mashed down underneath all the other crap I’ve been carrying around with me all these years. I know it’s too late, and I know all this is my fault—but I want to be that guy again. He’s still in here somewhere—I know it.”

She was looking directly into his eyes, every nuance of her expression telling him that she wanted to believe him—she wanted to so badly. But there were still questions to be answered—and they weren’t the sort of questions that could be dealt with so easily.

Finally, she took a deep breath, letting it out on a long sigh as she turned her considering gaze to the Christmas tree, and then to the dining room table where lunch had been laid out. “I’m hungry,” she murmured, and then she flicked her eyes back to Inuyasha, calling a silent truce. “Would you like to stay for lunch?”

He nodded, understanding—it wasn’t a decision, yet, but she was opening the door. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him—he hadn’t expected her to. She had always been too easy on him—he realized that now—and he had taken advantage of it. He was going to have to earn her forgiveness for once. He was going to have to earn her trust. And after living his entire life without earning a single thing for himself, seeing where that had gotten him, he was glad to do so.

Inuyasha remained for the rest of the day, visiting with Kagome’s relatives and testing the waters with her every so often—though he got the feeling she still needed some space from him, so he gave it to her. After dinner, Kagome’s mother invited him to stay the night, rather than getting a motel or trying to make the drive all the way back to the city that evening. He accepted—but of course, he would be sleeping on the couch.

Long after everyone else had shuffled off to bed, Inuyasha still lay awake. He rolled over so that he was facing the back of the couch, trying to get comfortable—but it was impossible. His back was twisted awkwardly, and his feet stuck off the end, making the lack of back support even more pronounced. But none of that would have mattered if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with thoughts of his wife sleeping soundly upstairs.

Finally, he gave up on trying to sleep and pushed himself to his feet to go steal one of Kagome’s mom’s peanut blossoms from the kitchen. He leaned against the counter, staring at the dim streetlight shining through the curtains over the sink as he munched on a cookie—and another, and another—and he kept thinking of Kagome.

Things were going relatively well. He felt like he’d made a bit of progress at dinner—but he still got the distinct impression that there was an invisible wall between them, and she had no plans to take it down just yet. He was still on probation—still awaiting the final judgment. In the end, no matter what he did, she still might say no.

He couldn’t let that happen—not without a fight. He needed her too much. At one point in his life, perhaps not so long ago, it would have made him furious to think that he needed anyone at all—but none of that seemed to matter anymore. All that mattered was her.

After polishing off his fifth blossom, he slipped out of the kitchen to head back to the couch—but somehow, he couldn’t seem to pass the stairs. Hesitating only briefly, he changed course and mounted them silently, tiptoeing down the hall to the room at the end. He grasped the cool handle carefully and eased the door open—just to look at her, just to watch her sleep for a moment or two. Maybe then he could imagine that everything was right again, and he could get to sleep himself.

She was lying on her side turned away from him, but even so he could tell she was awake. He saw her flinch and stiffen slightly as the door opened, her whole body listening to him as he entered.

“Kagome,” he whispered.

She pretended not to hear.

“Kagome, I know you’re awake. Can I come in for a minute?”

She sighed, and then nodded against her pillow. He wasted no time in taking advantage of the window she’d given him, closing the door behind him quietly and coming to sit on the edge of the bed. She flicked on the bedside lamp, rolled over to face him and pushed herself into a sitting position, brushing her rumpled bangs out of her eyes.

For a moment, they simply looked at each other, and Inuyasha was struck anew by how beautiful she was. It had been a long time since he had really looked at her. Sure, he had seen her many times throughout the memories he had relived the previous night—but it was completely different to look at her and actually see her looking back. To be not just near her, but with her.

“I couldn’t sleep without you,” he said.

She gave a small smile and laugh, settling herself back against the headboard. “I haven’t been sleeping much myself lately.”

“You haven’t?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. And then she looked at him seriously and said, “Don’t think it was easy for me to leave. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I had to do it.”

“Why?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

“Because I wouldn’t know if it was the right thing unless I tried it.”

“And was it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He nodded his understanding and settled back against the headboard beside her, watching her profile.

“What made you come after me?” she asked finally, still staring straight ahead at the wall opposite.

He grinned wryly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” she said, raising a curious eyebrow.

“Okay,” he replied. “Have you ever seen _A Christmas Carol_?”

Now she looked at him full-on, dubious. “Yes…”

“Well, it sort of happened to me last night.”

She frowned. “You’re joking, right?”

“Nope. ‘Course, I can’t really be sure that it was real—I was a little drunk, and I caught part of an old movie version of it on TV that evening, so I might’ve just made the whole thing up. But…I guess it doesn’t really matter if it was real or not. Whatever it was, it…opened my eyes to a few things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Myself, mainly. Things like why I’ve been sort of pushing you away these last couple of years. And…about the baby.”

She stiffened and turned her gaze away. “What about the baby?” she said quietly.

He wanted to reach for her hand, but they were folded in her lap, and he wasn’t sure she was ready to let him, so he played it safe. “There were some things I never told you. I meant to, really—but when everything, you know, happened…I just didn’t know what to do.”

He paused, giving her the opportunity to stop him, and himself a chance to prepare to say what he needed to say—but she remained silent, and he took that as his cue to go on. “I know I said I didn’t want the baby, but—that wasn’t true. I was…scared. I was really scared…that I wouldn’t be any better at being a dad than my old man was—or maybe that having another person around to care about would just make it that much easier to…lose one of you. And then when we—when things went wrong, I didn’t know what to do. I was so worried about you and so mad at myself for not having been able to protect you both, and so wrapped up in how much I was hurting and how much I didn’t want to hurt that I…I didn’t even realize at first how much you were hurting too. And even when I did, I didn’t know what to do to make it better. I didn’t know how to be there for you. But I wanted to. I always want to be there for you.”

By this time, silent tears were rolling down her cheeks as she stared into the space in front of them. She sniffed a bit and swiped at her eyes with her right hand, swallowing, but not looking at him. Still, when she set her hand back down, it was on the comforter in-between them—and he took a chance, sliding his hand into hers, lacing their fingers together. She didn’t pull away. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and she closed her fingers around his as well.

“I know I haven’t been here for you like I should have been lately. I know I haven’t been talking to you like I used to. But please, Kagome, believe me when I say that that’s going to change. I’m here now. There’s nowhere else I want to be.”

Her thumb stroked the back of his hand reassuringly, and she nodded quietly. “I believe you.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, and then she breathed a sigh and said with a small smile, “I really should get some sleep. I promised Mom I’d go after-Christmas-sale shopping with her in the morning.”

He nodded his understanding and made to leave—but her hand tightened on his ever-so-slightly, making him stop and turn back to look at her with a question in his eyes.

“It’s alright. Stay,” she murmured.

His heart lifted at the words—and so did the wall between them as he slid beneath the covers and settled in behind her, wrapping her in his arms. He had never felt so relieved and comforted to have her nestled up against him as he did in that moment—and finally he felt as though he could breathe easily again. The worst was over, her slow, even breaths seemed to assure him. There was more to be said and done, but the worst was over—they were going to be alright, eventually.

“I love you, Kagome,” he whispered in her ear.

She settled back against him a little more cozily and breathed back, “I love you, too, Inuyasha.”


	9. Epilogue

“Kagome, what’re you—it’s fifty degrees outside,” Inuyasha said bemusedly, turning back to see his wife a few feet behind him on the path, readjusting the hat on their one-year-old son’s head and then securing it further with the hood of his snowsuit.

“I don’t want him to catch cold,” she replied.

“Catch cold? He’ll get heatstroke in that thing. Come on, the others are waiting for us.”

Kagome shifted the baby’s weight a bit higher up on her hip and jogged to catch up. “I don’t know why you had to schedule a company picnic when it’s so cold out.”

“It’s August, Kagome—how were we supposed to know the cold snap would hit so early this year?”

“I suppose—but it’s just so cold. Oh, I hope Sango’s brought an extra pair of mittens—these ones I grabbed for him are getting a hole, see?”

“He’ll be fine, sweetheart—it’s not that cold.”

She shot him a look. “This from the man who wears shorts and a t-shirt when it’s below freezing.”

“Come on, that was one time. And I didn’t suffer any permanent damage, did I?”

“You got pneumonia.”

He scoffed. “We don’t know that it was from that.”

She laughed at his stubbornness. “You’re impossible, you know that?” she said with a smile.

“Kagome! Inuyasha!” Miroku called out to them as they approached the maze of crowded picnic tables that covered a large patch of grass shaded on one side by a copse of trees. “And how is my godson this lovely morning?” he asked, holding out his arms to take little Daisuke off Kagome’s hands.

“Sweating like a pig would be my guess,” Inuyasha interjected.

“Will you give it a rest already,” Kagome sighed. “Look, I’ve got to go find Sango—Miroku, can you keep an eye on these two children here for me?”

“Hey!”

“Will do,” Miroku replied, ignoring Inuyasha’s outburst.

Kagome placated her husband with a smile and a kiss on the cheek and then disappeared into the crowd.

“So,” Miroku began as they strolled over toward the buffet tables at a leisurely pace, “things are going well, still?”

“Yeah,” Inuyasha replied with an easy smile. “I mean, the kid keeps us up half the night, and we don’t have much…you-know-what, but I think it’s worth the trade-off.”

“Told you it would be.”

“Yeah. Besides, if you can survive it, it should be a cinch for me…”

A few meters away from the happy picnic-goers, two silent observers stood unseen in the chilly morning fog near the trees. They watched Inuyasha and his son and Miroku as they joined a group of people clustered around the chips and dip, shaking hands and greeting friends. A minute or two later, Kagome reappeared with Sango and little Taro, and Kagome retrieved Daisuke from Miroku so they could all go find seats together at one of the nearby tables.

Sesshoumaru watched his sister-in-law fix plates of hot-dogs for the kids, watched Inuyasha cutting Daisuke’s hot-dog into coin-shaped slices and keeping an eye on him as he ate them while perched on his father’s lap.

Finally, after what seemed like eons of watching them silently, the other figure spoke.

“So, are you happy now? Are you ready to move on?” Shippo asked, turning toward the other spirit’s profile from where he was perched on his shoulder.

Sesshoumaru took one last, long look at his brother and his sister-in-law and his nephew, at the kind of comfortable, easy love that he had never learned to feel, never had the chance to experience, and decided that finally, knowing that his brother would be saved from his fate, he could leave—he could let go. “Yes. I’m ready.”

And then, without another word or another glance behind him, he turned and strolled away, dissolving into the mist, releasing himself to whatever realm waits beyond this Earth, and the new sort of life that was in store.


End file.
